


The Scars of Time

by cleflink



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 10:13:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15337674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleflink/pseuds/cleflink
Summary: Jensen works as a Chrono Tech, which is just a fancy title for being a time-traveling mechanic who fixes holes in the fabric of history. It's not exactly glamorous, but Jensen has learned to be content with his lot in life. Then he meets Jared and, suddenly, there's so much more to his life than just being content.But Jensen's first loyalty must always be to the integrity of the time stream. And when Jared's very existence threatens to turn all of history inside out, Jensen is faced with the only decision he never wanted to make.





	The Scars of Time

  


The first time Jeff mentioned retirement, Jensen didn't think he was being serious. 

Of course, considering the fact that they were both sitting in a squalid prison cell in 1692 at the time, Jensen thought he could be forgiven for figuring that Jeff was just blowing smoke. It wasn't much different from the complaining he'd been doing all week, after all.

"What a fucking disaster," Jeff muttered under his breath, his exasperation coming through clearly despite the low volume. "Remind me how this job went so profoundly tits up?"

Jensen shrugged as best as he was able given the manacles weighing down his wrists. "We went out of our way to get accused of being witches in freaking Salem? Which, if you'll recall, was your idea."

" _My_ idea was to get one of us condemned as a witch, while the other one worked to fix things on the outside." Jeff huffed out an explosive breath and slumped back against the filthy wall. "Instead we're both stuck in here with our thumbs up our asses while the witch hunts continue."

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious," Jensen deadpanned. "It's really helpful." 

"Could you at least pretend to give a shit? We could be hanged in the morning."

Jensen considered. "Unlikely. Over 150 people were accused in the witch trails, but only 19 were actually hanged." He glanced around the cramped cell, nose wrinkling in disgust. "Honestly, we're probably in more danger of dying from poor hygiene before they ever get around to taking us to the gallows."

Jeff's eyes narrowed. "Well, look at you, being all calm. Also, since when do you know so much about the Salem Witch Trials? You swallow an encyclopedia recently?"

"Ha, ha. Just because you never read Kaz's briefs doesn't mean that I'm as bad as you are." Jensen paused, then added innocently, "Maybe we could have avoided this whole mess if you had."

Jeff cuffed him upside the head. "Shut it. I'm suddenly thinking fondly of a certain punk ass kid who cried like a baby when he thought he was going to get shot as a traitor by the Redcoats."

"Oh, right, because you were totally chill when we got almost got executed by Bloody Bill Anderson in the Centralia Massacre," Jensen shot back. 

"Quiet down!" their jailer ordered, and Jensen belatedly realized that their quiet conversation had become somewhat less quiet as they bickered. The other prisoners watched with weary, broken resignation; Jensen doubted there was much that could break them out of the resigned apathy they all wore like a second skin. It was Salem all over, really.

Jeff shook his head. "I'm too old for this shit," he muttered, which he'd been saying pretty much ever since Jensen had met him. 

So Jensen did what he always did: he shrugged and answered, "It's never stopped you before, old man."

Normally, it earned him a smack upside the head and some more insults, but Jeff must have been more concerned about a beating from the guards than Jensen thought, since all he did was sigh and let his head thunk back against the wall. "If we get out of this, I'm fucking retiring."

"Take me with you," Jensen suggested. "Retirement sounds pretty nice right now."

Jeff snorted. "Kid, you've got least a hundred years on the job to go before you can even start thinking about retiring. Not to mentioned we've got got to figure out how not to die in Salem, first."

Jensen conceded the point, even if he wasn't overly concerned about that. Being condemned to hang in the Salem Witch Trials was far from the most dangerous day on the job that Jensen had ever had. 

Just another day in the life of a Chrono Tech.

They got out of it, like they always did, and Jensen got the dubious joy of adding 'one month in a Salem jail cell' to his list of life experiences that he'd never wanted to have. 

"Think we'll cause a sensation?" he asked as they made their hurried way out of town, relying on the cover of night to keep them hidden from any prying eyes in the silent houses. "Vanishing in the middle of the night?"

"They'll likely keep it quiet," Jeff replied. "The last thing the court wants is to admit that two convicted witches have vanished into thin air. Better for their reputation if they say we died in captivity or something like that. Check Kaz's databanks later if you're curious."

Jensen nodded, keeping pace with Jeff as they reached the edge of the town and plunged into the dense forest that surrounded it. It was slow going since they'd been relieved of their tool kits upon being arrested, but a keen sense of direction was a necessary part of the skill set for a Chrono Tech, so there wasn't too much backtracking necessary. Even so, the sky was starting to lighten by the time they finally reached their destination.

Kaz, thank whatever deities might be up there, was right where they'd left him, currently doing a stellar impression of a covered cart. Jensen heaved a sigh of relief as he pushed aside the tarp and climbed inside, the trappings of the seventeenth century falling away to reveal Kaz's familiar chrome interior and banks of blinking consoles. 

Kaz chimed out an immediate greeting as they entered, the sound of his familiar tones easing the last of the nervous tension knotting up Jensen's shoulders.

Jensen smiled fondly. "Home sweet time machine. I missed you too, Kaz," he crooned, and Kaz asked how the job had gone, his tones heavily laden with concern at their long absence. "Oh, don't worry about it. Jeff just decided to go for some verisimilitude on this one and got us arrested for witchcraft."

Kaz apparently wasn't pleased by this, judging by the way the air immediately blistered with a cacophony of discordant chiming.

"Kaz, hey, wait," Jeff protested, holding up his hands in surrender. "It's not, I wasn't- don't you take that tone with me!"

Jensen smirked, not even bothering to hide his amusement. Some henpecking from Kaz was the least Jeff deserved after the clusterfuck he'd just put them both through. Jeff glared at him, a promise of terrifying vengeance in his eyes, and Jensen threw off a sloppy salute before heading off to the bathroom to get cleaned up. He might spend most of his life in the past, but that didn't mean he'd ever really got used to living in his own filth. He deserved a goddamn shower.

An hour or so later, Jensen was finally feeling clean again, and the lack of noise from the central console room suggested that Jeff had finally succeeded in soothing Kaz's ire. Dressed in a clean pair of coveralls, Jensen wandered out of the bathroom to find Jeff sat in his usual chair and still covered in a month's worth of dirt, staring blankly over the top of his folded hands. 

"Bathroom's free," Jensen offered, strolling over to the windscreen. The forest had vanished, replaced by a generic stretch of paved road that could have belonged to pretty much any time in the twenty-first century. He couldn't say he was sorry to see the last of seventeenth century Salem.

"Thanks," Jeff said vaguely. He made no move to get up. 

Jensen frowned. "Everything okay?"

"Hmm?" Jeff's eyes flicked towards him. "Oh, yes. Just thinking, is all."

"I would have thought you'd had more than enough of that sitting in a prison cell for so long," Jensen teased, throwing himself down on the couch opposite Jeff's chair. "I've made a decision," he declared grandly.

Jeff raised an eyebrow at him. "Have you? Do tell."

"No more jobs with Puritans. They suck." He offered Jeff a smirk. "And their prisons are highly unsanitary." 

Jeff's chuckle was a little subdued. "A stunning argument if ever I heard one."

Jensen waited for more, for the same tired lines that Jeff trotted out every time Jensen tried to veto their ever returning to a particularly unpleasant time period or other, and was surprised when nothing more was forthcoming. Jeff's eyes were turned his way, but his gaze was distant, distracted. 

"Hey," Jensen said sharply, and felt his concern sharpen when it actually made Jeff startle, his gaze visibly snapping back to the present. Jensen huffed. "Did you leave your brain behind when we escaped, old man? And if you say you're 'thinking'," he added, when Jeff opened his mouth to answer, "I'm going to hit you with extreme prejudice."

"Sorry," Jeff surprised him by saying. "For worrying you."

"Okay, now I know there's something wrong. Since when do you apologize?" 

That made a smile flicker across Jeff's sober face. "Are you ever not a brat?"

"You had your chance to train me out of that decades ago. It's way too late to start complaining now. " Jensen fixed him with a narrow look. "Now can you stop trying to change the subject and just _tell_ me what's wrong, already?"

Jeff leaned back in his chair, hands falling to his knees. "I'm retiring," he said bluntly. 

Jensen stared at him, completely shocked. "You're- what?"

"Retiring." Jeff's mouth quirked into a faint grin. "So I guess it's up to you now whether or not you ever take another job in Salem."

"But you can't retire!" Jensen protested.

"I think you'll find that I can. And, as I recall, I did warn you."

Jensen's mind flashed back to their conversation a fortnight ago. "How was I supposed to know you meant it?" he demanded, his voice sounding embarrassingly shrill.

"Jensen," Jeff said, his tone softening. "I've been doing this job a long time. It's long past time I was hanging up my hat."

"Nonsense! You don't look a day over 200!"

"Why thank you," Jeff said dryly. 

Jensen flung his arms up. "Oh, you know what I mean!" 

"I became eligible to retire nearly a decade ago," Jeff pointed out, his tone offhand even though the words were anything but. "I kept going because I like my job and, well-" He made a vague gesture at Jensen, who could only appreciate him not saying _that_ aloud. For all that Jeff was more of a father to him than his actual father had ever been, there were some things that he just didn't want to hear. Knowing that Jeff had delayed his retirement for ten years for Jensen's sake made an awkward warmth glow in his chest.

But still.

"I can't do this job solo!" he said. "It'll be a disaster!" 

Jeff's expression was calm. "No, it won't. You've been taking the lead on most of our jobs recently, haven't you noticed?" His mouth quirked wryly. "And you're right that I didn't handle taking lead on this one as well as I should have." 

"That was just-" Jensen started, but Jeff kept speaking right over him.

"Leaving aside the fact that I nearly got both of us killed, we could easily have done some serious damage to the time stream if that plan hadn't worked. And it really wasn't a good plan, but it was the best I could come up with. If that's my best, we're both in trouble. A Chrono Tech needs to be quick thinking and decisive, and I'm becoming less of each with every passing year."

Jensen bit his lip, fighting back the swell of emotions bullying their way up his throat. "But still!"

"Jensen," Jeff said, with a soft patience that Jensen hadn't heard from him in a long time. "You've been an apprentice for more than long enough. Trust me: you're more than ready to do this job solo."

"But I don't want to!"

"Kid, I say this with all fondness, but it's not up to you. I'd already decided that this was going to be my last job before we even took it, and the way it worked out hasn't done anything to change my mind. Quite the opposite, in fact." Jeff rose to his feet, careless of the devastated expression Jensen was sure was on his face. "I'm going to go get cleaned up. We can talk more later, but give yourself time to get used to the idea before you reject it entirely. Not all change is bad."

Jensen managed a short, stiff nod, and Jeff sighed a little before patting his shoulder on his way out of the room. The bathroom door shut with a click behind him, and Jensen listened idly to the sound of the shower hissing on.

Kaz chimed a worried query at him.

"It's fine," Jensen said automatically. He heaved a sigh. "I'll be fine."

The following week was tense.

Jensen discovered that Jeff had put his retirement paperwork in nearly six months earlier; the management had approved it and signed off on everything, and had basically just been waiting for Jeff to decide he was done to officially remove him from the employee roster and promote Jensen to the sole Chrono Tech assigned to their time machine. And Jeff had deliberately put off telling Jensen for as long as possible, so as to give him essentially no opportunity to try and convince him otherwise.

Not that that kept Jensen from trying, but it quickly became clear that he might as well have been arguing with a brick wall for all the difference it made. Jeff had already thought of any objections that Jensen could come up with and was prepared with counterarguments for all of them. Not to mention that Jeff had always been an ornery cuss. Thinking back, Jensen wasn't sure he'd won even a single argument with the asshole once over their entire long acquaintance. Clearly, he was doomed to failure.

So he squared his shoulders, clenched his jaw and got on with things.

The management threw a party for Jeff's retirement. It was flatteringly well attended; Jeff had been working as a Chrono Tech for long enough that he knew pretty much everyone in the organization, and he'd always been surprisingly good at being social considering what a grump he was most of the time.

Jeff spent the evening in shining form: drinking, laughing and socializing as everyone and their grandmother came by to congratulate on surviving long enough to retire. 

Jensen mostly just stood there and tried to pretend that he wasn't feeling so fucking betrayed by the whole situation.

The next morning, a very hungover Jeff winced his way through the process of officially transferring command of Kaz to Jensen, and then they took their last trip together to drop Jeff off at his house: a homey side split by the seaside in the twenty-eighth century. 

"Well," Jensen said inanely, when they were standing together in front of Jeff's door. His skin was itching with discomfort. "Bye, I guess."

Jeff rolled his eyes. "How are you still so awkward after all these years? It's not the end of the world, you know."

"I know," Jensen muttered, not sounding even slightly convinced.

"You're ready for this," Jeff said, just like he had been all week. Jensen wondered if Jeff thought it would actually become the truth if he said it often enough. "You're going to be fine."

"Sure. But if Kaz won't listen to me, I'm dragging you out of retirement to deal with it," Jensen told him, not really joking.

Jeff just looked amused. "Please. Kaz's liked you better than me for the last 30 years, at least. You'll both be fine."

Jensen shrugged, eyes dropping to the floor to avoid the look in Jeff's. "Guess we're going to have to be, huh?"

"Hey," Jeff said, and Jensen looked up from his shoes to see an unusually kind look on Jeff's face. "You take care of yourself, okay?"

Jensen swallowed hard. "Same goes for you, old man. It'd be embarrassing if retirement did you in after you'd survived both smallpox and the Spanish flu."

Strong arms dragged Jensen into a rough full body hug that was as wanted as it was unexpected. "You always have to have the last word, don't you, kid?" Jeff demanded gruffly. "Pain in my ass."

And Jensen could have made a joke about how much easier that was going to be now, when there was nobody to talk back to him, but the thought was too damn depressing for words. Instead, he buried his face in the front of Jeff's jacket and held on tight, savouring the rare moment of closeness.

It didn't last long. Jeff's grip loosened after a handful of heartbeats, and Jensen pulled himself free before Jeff could be the one to back off. "I better go," he said, ignoring the rawness of his voice. 

"You'd better come visit me," Jeff said, in a tone of voice that made it sound more like a threat than anything else. "Don't make me come find you."

Jensen forced a smug smile. "Like you could catch us." He brushed a hand across Jeff's shoulder, not quite firmly enough to count as a clap, then forced himself to turn away. "Later."

"I'll hold you to that," Jeff called after him, and Jensen didn't dare look back to watch Jeff watch him go. 

He could still feel the weight of Jeff's eyes as he climbed into Kaz, the space between his shoulder blades itching even after the door swung closed behind him.

"Time to go, Kaz," he said dully, and kept his eyes on his hands as he plugged in a random set of time coordinates, sending them far away from Jeff and his happy new life. It was only then that he looked up, ignoring Kaz's worried chiming to take stock of the space that had always before been for two of them and now was just for him.

It seemed suddenly much bigger than it ever had before.

"Well," he sighed, the word falling heavily into the quiet air. "Suppose we'd better get back to work, huh?"

Life After Jeff was... strange.

Jensen's first few solo jobs were total milk runs, which he appreciated. Say what you would about the management, at least they were respectful of the basic human frailties of their staff. They kept him busy doing basic maintenance and easy patch jobs, and he was cautiously relieved to find that Jeff had been right about Jensen's ability to keep things up as a solo gig. 

Intellectually, it wasn't much of a surprise. Kaz did most of the work anyway, and Jensen really had been running point on jobs for years. They'd always worked well as a team and, in the wake of Jeff's departure, Kaz closed ranks around him like a mama bear protecting its cub. Jensen was pretty sure he had the most thorough job reports in the company, courtesy of Kaz, and he just dared anyone to try crossing him and risk the wrath of a vengeful time machine. 

So, all in all, Life After Jeff was pretty much what he'd been hoping it would be: essentially the same as Life With Jeff.

What Jensen hadn't been expecting was the loneliness. 

It should have been obvious. He'd been sharing space with Jeff for his entire adult life, so it stood to reason that it might be lonely without him. And yet it had never really occurred to Jensen to be worried about it, because they had never progressed much past coworkers - or maybe awkward roommates - on the friendship scale. They'd never really spent much of their down time together. They were both men of few words, and the age gap between them - numerically, visually and historically- made for limited shared interests. Jensen had always spent more time talking to Kaz than he ever had to Jeff, and Kaz was still very much there. So loneliness hadn't seemed like a concern worth having.

Funny how Jensen hadn't thought about the fact that he'd never been truly alone since Jeff had picked him up off the side of the road all those decades ago. And yeah, he still had Kaz, but that wasn't the same as sharing his space with another human being. Jensen had all but forgotten what it felt like to be alone, to have no one around who cared whether he lived or died. 

It made him feel like he was an unwanted teenager again. He didn't particularly relish the feeling.

Honestly, it was almost a relief when the easy jobs ended.

On the 143rd day After Jeff, Jensen yawned his way out of his bedroom, careless of the hems of his pajamas dragging on the floor behind him. "Morning, Kaz," he said, shuffling over to the coffee maker. "What's on the agenda today?"

Kaz chimed out a response that made Jensen pause.

"A ripple?" he repeated, and Kaz answered with an enthusiastic affirmative.

"Not sure you're supposed to be so excited about a rip in the fabric of time, Kaz," Jensen chided, and earned a rude answer in response. "No, I get your point. I'm tired of maintenance checks too. We'll get going as soon as I'm dressed, okay?"

Kaz's excitement was palpable in the air, and Jensen found himself hurrying his way through his morning routine; Kaz wasn't the only one feeling unreasonably eager about a _real_ problem to solve. In less than twenty minutes, he was sliding into the pilot's chair with a fresh cup of coffee and the remains of his toast dangling from his mouth. 

"Alright, Kaz," he said grandly. "Let's get cracking. When're we going?"

Kaz trilled out an excited response, and entered the coordinates. They meant very little to Jensen, who'd never really got the hang of reading time coordinates; add that to his list of things to start paying attention to now that he didn't have Jeff to deal with them. For now, he simply keyed them into the drive system, trusting that Kaz had them right. 

Time travel was a lot more mundane than pop culture had once led Jensen to believe. As soon as he hit the ignition, the world beyond the windscreen blurred, faded and reformed, like a cheap special effect. There was a slight shift in Kaz's balance to account for the new terrain underneath, but that was the only physical sign that they'd just travelled through space and time. 

According to the view out the windscreen, they'd materialized on a quiet city street, parked against the curb. A public park loomed to their left, and a collection of shop fronts stood facing them across the street. 

"Alright then, let's see where we are." Jensen flicked the scanner on. "Miami, huh? Somewhere I'd rather be when I'm off duty, honestly."

Kaz chimed reprovingly at him.

"Hey, I'm just saying. Looks like the mid 2000s," he added, eyes still fixed on the scanner read out. "2004, specifically. Not the best year, but I guess it could be worse. Hmm, just after 10 in the morning, so it's kind of weird that there's so little traffic. Where's the ripple?"

Kaz indicated that it was somewhere in the park, which Jensen could only appreciate. Less chance of running into any temporals than there would be on the street.

"Ambient population?" he asked absently, most of his attention on trying to figure out how far away from the ripple they'd materialized. "Say a 10 mile radius." 

Kaz chimed out a reply, and Jensen frowned. "Repeat that." 

Kaz did. The number didn't change. 

Jensen shook his head. "What do you mean, 200,000? The entire population of Miami's not even double that. How can there be 200,000 people in a space the size of a postage sta-mp..." A thought occurred, and Jensen paused. "What did you say the date was, again?" 

Kaz flashed the current time stamp on the screen.  _Wednesday, March 10, 2004._

"Oh, fuck me," Jensen groaned. "It's goddamn spring break. Fucking perfect." 

Kaz trilled out a question. 

Jensen sighed. "It's an excuse for overworked college kids to get blisteringly drunk and make questionable life choices in the name of taking a break from school." 

Kaz's understanding tone had the echo of another question in it. 

"Hmm? Oh, no, I never did. Never went to college, remember?" 

A sad chime.

Jensen waved that off. "Ancient history, Kaz. And clearly nothing that I needed to know to be successful in life." He frowned thoughtfully. "Pull up a map of the area, could you?"

A road map appeared on the screen, and Jensen considered the distance between their location and Miami Beach, where most of the partying would be located. It was only about a fifteen minute drive, but over an hour walk, so hopefully none of the college kids would be willing to make the effort to come all the way out here when most of the fun was back at Miami Beach. Dealing with something like a ripple would be much easier without bystanders.

Not that he could do much but make the best of whatever situation he found himself in. "Welp," he sighed. "Guess I'd better get going."

Heaving himself out of his chair, Jensen started collecting the standard supplies: pylons, caution tape, sketchbook, first aid kit. They all fit into his bag easily, because working as a Chrono Tech meant that he had all the best toys to play with. He threw in a couple of other odds and ends, just in case, then hoisted the whole thing over his shoulder and turned to leave.

He'd got as far as putting a hand to the door when Kaz chimed out a reminder about his clothes. Jensen glanced down and realized that he'd forgotten to turn on his TAC gear. "Guess blue coveralls aren't really the usual attire for a trip to Miami, huh?"

He activated his TAC and rolled his eyes when he wound up wearing a godawful Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and a pair of flip flops. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

Kaz laughed at him, the sound ringing through the room like bells.

"Shut up, you." Jensen plucked at the front of his shirt with profound distaste. "Why is this shirt even in the database? A golf shirt would have been fine."

Kaz's answering trill suggested that Jensen should stop complaining about his clothes and start doing his job already. 

"Fine. But I want it put on record that I look like this under duress." Jensen gathered up his pack, and pushed his way out the door to the sound of Kaz mocking him.

The trials and tribulations he put up with.

The knowledge that it was spring break in Maimi went a long way to explaining why there was no one around at this time of day - too late for the work rush, and too early for the partyers to be awake - but Jensen still wasted no time in heading into the park, eager to get out of sight. 

It was a glorious day. Almost despite himself, Jensen found himself enjoying the warmth of the sun, and the quiet peace of the morning. It was the sort of peaceful, solitary moment that he would have hoarded jealously before solitary had become the defining characteristic of his life. Still, it was a nice enough place for a walk.

He found the ripple right on top of a paved walkway that looked awfully well travelled. Because things could never be easy.

Always before, Jeff had been responsible for setting up the perimeter, while Jensen got to work figuring out where it had originated. Now, of course, he had to do everything by himself. 

"I need to buy an assistant," Jensen decided, realizing only after he'd done so that he'd spoken aloud. He was clearly spending too much time alone. 

Oh well. It wasn't like there was anyone around to listen to him.

At first glance, the ripple didn't look particularly friendly - not that they ever were, really - and Jensen really didn't like the location. Too much potential for a random jogger to run right into it without realizing.

Clearly, the first order of business was blocking off the area. Identifying the ripple would have to wait until after Jensen knew that no one was going to collide with it.

He eyed the area thoughtfully. It was a nice enough spot, with a paved path bisecting the clearing and a couple of benches and a small fountain in eyeshot. His attention zeroed in on the lovely large paving stones that made up the footpath, and smiled. They'd do nicely.

Jensen set his kit down on the grass, and crouched down, rooting through the supplies he'd brought until he found a sledgehammer. He hefted it and stood, slinging it over one shoulder as he ambled over to the path.

There was no way in Hell that Jensen was getting close enough to the ripple to take out the paving stone directly under it, but the ones on either side would do well enough. Keeping a weather eye on the ripple, just in case it decided to surge, Jensen positioned himself in front of the adjacent paving stone.

He glanced around casually. There was no one in his immediate vicinity, which was good enough for him. It was the work of a moment to firm his grip on the sledgehammer, hoist it over his head and bring it down on the paving stone with a bone-jarring thud. 

The stone shattered beautifully under the force, the impact sending fractures spidering across the surface. Unhurriedly, Jensen skirted around the ripple and gave the stone on the other side the same treatment. Then he set aside the sledgehammer and reached for the pylons. 

In less than a minute, he had a nine foot section of the path blocked off by a small army of pylons, caution tape running between them for good measure. The shattered stones looked even worse for the added warnings; Jensen could only hope that it would be enough to prevent some idiot from getting himself killed. 

"Now, then," he said, returning the sledgehammer to his kit. "Let's get this show on the road."

He settled on the grass a cautious distance away from the ripple and pulled out his sketch pad and a pack of coloured pencils. 

Jeff had always preferred to use his tablet to capture ripples and time eddies, but Jensen had to admit a certain fondness for the old fashioned method. He flipped the sketchpad open to a fresh page and spread the pencils out on the grass beside his thigh. Then he turned his attention to the ripple.

There was a certain knack to seeing through time. Jeff had been good enough to see it without even having to try, and Jensen had grown used to seeing Jeff's gaze glance right off him as he looked into the flow of life from the past to the present to the future and back again. 

Jensen didn't have that kind of skill yet. He could only see time if he looked at things sideways, out of the corner of his eye. Ripples and other distortions in the continuum were easier, because they were out of sync with the rest of history, but it still required a lot of concentration

Unfocusing his gaze, Jensen looked to a patch of empty air just to the left of the ripple. As long as he didn't try too hard to look at it head on, he could catch the telltale flicker of the ripple on the edge of his vision. 

It was an angry, violent looking thing. Jensen couldn't say exactly what shape it was taking, but he could sense the ebullient nature of it. 

"Whatever is causing this," he muttered to himself, groping blindly for the his pencil crayons. "It's a doozy of a glitch." 

Taking a deep breath, Jensen put his pencil to paper, doing his best to capture the essence of the ripple, more so than what it actually looked like. 

Jensen let his pencil drag blindly across the page, fighting his eyes' natural inclination to track his progress. The more he drew, the more nervous it made him. He hadn't seen a ripple of this magnitude since, since... never, maybe. Even that attempt by the revisionists to change the outcome of the Siege of Yorktown hadn't been this bad. 

Was he even going to be able to handle this on his own? 

Jensen didn't know how long he sat there, trading out one colour for another without paying attention to what colours they were or what kind of a mess he was making of the pages of his sketchbook. He filled several pages without pausing, knowing that Kaz would have an easier time identifying the problem if he brought back a collection of images.

He was so focused on his work that he didn't register the sounds of someone coming up behind him until it was too late.

"That's cool," a voice said, from over Jensen's shoulder.

His pencil carved a jagged scar across the paper as Jensen jolted. He whirled immediately, grip on the pencil shifting to turn it into a stabbing weapon if need be.

There was a skinny bean pole of a kid standing behind him, his eyes wide and his hands held up in surrender. He looked to be in his early 20s, with disastrously shaggy hair, a screen-printed shirt and board shorts. 

"Sorry," said the bean pole. "Didn't mean to surprise you. Is it wrecked?"

Jensen had no idea what he was talking about. "What?" he asked, his instinctive alarm slow to retreat.

One hand gestured towards the sketchbook in Jensen's lap. "Your drawing. I'm really sorry."

"It's fine," Jensen said, after a beat. He eased his death grip on the pencil once he'd decided that the kid probably wasn't about to attack him.

"What is it?" the kid asked, craning his neck for a better look at Jensen's sketchpad. "Are you one of those abstract art people?"

Jensen flipped the sketchbook closed. "It's private."

"Oh, uh, sorry. So!" the kid said, with a heartiness that did little to make him sound anything but awkward. "I wasn't expecting to see anyone else way out here."

"No?" Jensen asked, putting a bite into the word to make it clear that he was in no mood for small talk. 

The kid didn't appear to get the hint. "Yeah, I was kind of looking for some peace and quiet." He chuckled awkwardly. "I'm not really that big of a partier, if I'm honest."

"Probably picked the wrong spring break trip, then."

He got another awkward laugh for that. "Yeah, my, um, friends planned the trip. Felt like I couldn't say no, you know?" The kid put his hands in his pockets and offered Jensen a shy little smile. "I'm Jared, by the way. In case you were wondering who the crazy guy interrupting your drawing time was."

"I wasn't," Jensen said, trying very hard to ignore this Jared kid until he gave up and went the hell away.

Jared, who was apparently immune to being ignored, pressed bravely onwards. "So, um, are you having a good week?"

A highly depressing part of Jensen that sounded suspiciously like Jeff pointed out that this was the longest conversation he'd had with another person in the five months since Jeff had retired. Jensen firmly told it to shut up. 

"Look," he said. "I'm here looking for some peace and quiet so I can draw." His eyes flicked reflexively towards the ripple. "So could you just-"

He almost missed it.

It was the tiniest hint, just a pulse of colour there and gone in a fraction of a second. If he hadn't looked over at that precise moment, he'd never have seen it. The unmistakable sign of a ripple about to surge. 

Jensen's blood ran cold.

"Could I just what?" Jared asked, but Jensen wasn't listening. Because they were too damn close to run and this fucking temporal didn't even know that there was something here that he needed to run _from_. 

'Don't get the temporals involved' was one of the first rules of Jensen's job. 

Maybe he should have stuck to milk runs a little longer.

The ripple pulsed again, more urgently. 

"Um, are you okay?" Jared asked. He half stooped in front of Jensen, wary concern creasing his brow. "You look really -" 

Jensen never found out how he looked, because the outer shell of the ripple chose that moment to burst free in a soundless explosion. And Jared was right in its path.

Jensen didn't think. "Get down!" he barked, fisting a hand in Jared's shirt and yanking, hard.

Jared yelped and tumbled on top of him in a flurry of limbs, scant seconds before the surge raced through the air above them. Jensen's ears rang with the concussive force of its passing, and he scarcely dared to breathe as another surge followed on the heels of the first. He kept Jared pulled close, feeling his heart hammering wildly in his chest.

He lay there for several long moments after the second surge passed, willing his nerves to calm as he waited to see if there would be a third. When nothing happened after thirty seconds or so, he sighed in relief and moved to sit up.

And belatedly realized that he was nose to nose with a scarlet-faced Jared. 

Their eyes caught, and Jared kind of squeaked. He looked mortified. 

Now normally, Jensen would have been all for lying on his back in the grass with a hot guy on top of him, but this was really not the moment. And shit, this really wasn't the best way to avoid involving temporals in his day job, now was it? Poor Jared looked about ready to have a heart attack. 

Jensen gave a mental shrug. Only one thing for it, then.

"Sorry," he calmly unclenched his fist from Jared's shirt and offered up a sharkish smile. "Too fast for you, huh?" 

He could practically see Jared's brain skipping tracks trying to process that. "Uh, what?" 

Jensen heaved a sigh. "Oh well, it was worth a try. Can you blame me, though?" Jared still looked confused, so Jensen threw in a smarmy leer for good measure." S'not often a sweet thing like you wanders into my lap." 

Finally, Jared was starting to look offended. "That's-"

"But seriously," Jensen said, giving him no time to collect his thoughts. "If you're not gonna do anything helpful down there, could you maybe get out from between my legs before you offend yourself?" 

Jared's cheeks blazed with new heat, and he scrambled off Jensen like his wife had just walked through the door and found him with the pool boy. Needless to say, it was an inspired kind of flight. 

"I- that's, I can't believe-!" 

"Hey, no harm done." Jensen climbed to his feet. "It was an honest mistake, okay? You're the one who came up to me, after all."

Jared looked torn between fury and apoplectic embarrassment. It wasn't his best look, Jensen had to say, but it was just the reaction he'd been going for. If Jared was busy being distracted by the slight to his virtue, he wouldn't be paying attention to the little details of Jensen's lie that didn't make sense. Like the fact that he'd been doing his level best to make Jared fuck off not five minutes earlier.

"I'll leave you to enjoy the scenery, then. Try not to hit on anyone else you don't mean to, okay?" Still moving at that slow, unhurried pace, Jensen gathered his bag and his sketchbook, and turned to go. All he had to do was get his sketches back to Kaz, and they'd be able to figure out the origin point of the ripple and get this job over with. And having thoroughly pissed off his new would-be acquaintance, Jensen ought to be free to get on with things now. 

"Wait," Jared's voice said. Jensen resisted the urge to groan aloud. 

"Why, have you decided to beat me up?" he asked instead, making sure his careless playboy grin was fixed firmly on his face. "Why can't you just take it as a compliment instead?" 

"You said 'get down'," Jared said, ignoring Jensen's words completely. Dammit. 

"I did what now?" 

"When you grabbed me, you said get down. Like there was something dangerous I was in the way of." He glanced around. "But there's nothing dangerous here." 

Jensen scoffed. "Aren't you a little young to be hard of hearing?" 

Jared crossed his arms over his chest. "I think you should tell me what's really going on."

God, Jensen didn't have time for this.

Jensen's eyes skirted over the edges of the ripple, cataloguing the size and the rapid play of oil slick purple. It was growing. Fast. The longer he stood here arguing with Jared, the harder it was going to be to fix whatever problem in the time stream was causing it.

"What are you looking at?" Jared demanded, sounding frustrated. 

"Hmm?" Jensen shifting his attention back to Jared, but the damage was already done. He shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. "I was thinking about lunch." 

"Bullshit." To Jensen's horror, Jared turned on his heel and started marching towards the ripple. "There's something over here. You keep looking at."

"Don't!" It escaped him without permission, and Jensen's heart sank when all it earned him was a triumphant expression thrown over Jared's shoulder. 

"I knew it!" Jared was still outside the pylons, and technically safe, but it wasn't the relief it should have been. Not with a ripple as volatile as this one.

"Look," Jensen said, holding his arms out in a placating manner. "You win, okay? There is something there, and it's dangerous. Can you just come away from it? I promise I'll explain everything."

Jared's eyes narrowed at him. "Why should I trust you? All you've done so far is lie to me. Are you a criminal or something?"

Jensen just barely refrained from rolling his eyes. "As if I'd tell you if I was. Honestly, kid, I don't care if you trust me or not, but you're about three steps away from writing yourself out of existence, so I'd _really_ appreciate it if you'd care enough about your own skin to come the hell away from- fuck!"

Jensen's body was moving almost before he'd registered the next surge, practically flying across the grass to hit Jared with a full-body tackle. For the second time in ten minutes, he found himself flattened against Jared on the ground, gasping with belated adrenaline at the near miss.

Except Jared hadn't been so lucky this time.

"Hcck!" Jared choked, and Jensen was already swearing as he rolled off him to check out the damage. 

Jared was curled up in a ball, gripping his left arm with his right, just below the elbow, the skin turning white around his tightly clenched fingers. Jensen could see fine crystalline lines appearing across Jared's hand, iridescent and sickly green. The glow they gave off was bright enough to make him squint. As he watched, they snaked further down Jared's arm, spreading dangerously fast. 

"Wh-what-?" Jared gasped, his eyes wide and scared. 

"Let go of your arm," Jensen ordered, and then forcibly pried Jared's fingers free when he didn't comply fast enough. "The ingemination will spread faster if you touch it." 

"The what?"

"Not important." Jensen pushed him to lie flat on his back, fighting the urge to panic. That was the last thing either of them needed.

The glowing veins crept over Jared's elbow and started curling around his biceps. The light from his hand was almost too bright to look at directly. 

"Try to lie still," Jensen told Jared, whose breath was coming fast and shallow. "You're going to be fine. A quick shot of-" Jensen put a hand to his side, reaching for his kit, and met only empty air. "Shit," he breathed, casting around to see where the hell it had gone.

"What's happening?" Jared's small, scared voice asked, and Jensen nearly wept with relief when he spotted his kit, lying on the ground where he'd dropped it before his flying tackle.

He patted Jared's knee and climbed to his feet. "I'll be right back," he promised. He darted over to his kit, shoes skidding on the grass as he practically fell over himself trying to grab it without losing too much speed. He was back at Jared's side in a heartbeat, throwing his kit open and rooting around for the right serum. 

"I'm cold," Jared said. The ingemination had spread across his torso and down his other limbs. "Why am I so cold?"

Jensen didn't really think Jared needed to hear the answer to that question right now, so he ignored him in favour of pulling free the serum he was looking for and loading the injector. "Tilt your head," he instructed, and concentrated on getting the injector fitted properly against the thin skin of Jared's neck. The ingeminized veins were a few seconds away from hitting the same point. "Deep breath," he said, and then depressed the plunger before Jared even had a chance to do so.

Jared breathed out a shaky, pained sort of whimper, then his whole body went slack. The veins stopped their relentless encroachment, and the glow dimmed until Jared looked less like a human light bulb and more like someone who'd dipped themselves in glow in the dark paint. 

Not a good look in the long term, but it would do for now.

Jensen released the breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. "Thank fuck. Wake up, dumbass," he said, reaching out to pat Jared's cheek with perhaps more force than necessary. "You're not out of the woods yet."

Jared's eyelids fluttered. "Wha-?"

"Up you get," Jensen encouraged, looping an arm around Jared's shoulder and another around his waist before strong-arming him to his feet. Which was easier said than done, honestly; kid was more solid than he looked.

"What was that?" Jared, it seemed, was irritatingly lucid after nearly being written out of history. 

"Time ripple," Jensen answered shortly, because why the hell not tell the truth at this point. Hopefully Jared would chalk the whole thing up to a strange hallucination. He was here on spring break, after all; weren't all the kids hopped up on drugs and alcohol during spring break? "We need to get you back to my ship to get you properly looked at. That was just a patch job."

"Oh my god, you're an alien," Jared said, with a note of dumbfounded realization. "No wonder you're so inhumanly pretty."

Jensen decided to ignore that. "I'm not an alien. Can we please get moving now? You're kind of on a deadline, you know. Literally."

"Who are you?" Jared asked, because apparently he had no survival instincts at all. "Seriously, can you just tell me that?"

"My name's Jensen," Jensen said, because if it got the kid moving, it was fucking worth it. "And I'm the guy trying to save your life, you utter imbecile."

"But-" Jared started, then trailed off, a queasy expression flickering across his face. "Uh, I don't feel so good."

Jensen definitely rolled his eyes this time. "Of course you don't, you just stuck your hand in a time ripple and it tried to write you out of history. Which I'm trying to fix, if you'll stop being an idiot for ten seconds and come the fuck with me already!"

"You know," Jared said, almost calmly. "You're kind of a jerk."

"I'm aware. Are you ready to start walking yet?" 

Once Jared finally acquiesced to being led, they set off with Jensen supporting Jared's weight on one side, and toting his kit on the other, which threw him decidedly off balance and left the pair of them reeling like last place contestants in a three-legged race.

Jared had fallen silent when they started walking, which was a little concerning, since Jensen's brief acquaintance with him suggested that Jared was generally bad at shutting up. He kept a close eye on the ingemination of Jared's skin, but the injection was still doing its job keeping it from spreading. His training told him that Jared probably had a good half hour of chronological time before he was properly in trouble, but Jensen didn't relax his vigilance until Kaz came into view.

"Here we are," Jensen said, and felt the hitch in their forward momentum when Jared stopped altogether. He glared at him. "What?" 

If Jared's eyebrows climbed any higher, they'd officially be able to claim independence from his face. "You know, call me old fashioned, but my mama always taught me not to get into stalker vans with strange men."

Jensen glanced at Kaz - currently cloaked to look like a white utility van - and privately admitted that Jared had a point. Not that he was going to give him the satisfaction of knowing it.

"Hey, you want to stay out here, you be my guest. But given the fact that you're going to be dead within the hour if you do, I don't see that you've got a whole lot to lose right now."

Jared went even paler at that, and he swallowed hard. "Lead the way."

"Finally! A wise decision. I was starting to think you were incapable of those."

Jensen thought he heard Jared mutter 'such a dick' under his breath at that, but he decided not to let it bother him. Instead, he propped Jared up against his side to free up an arm, and pulled open the door. "Sorry I'm late, Kaz! Ran into a slight complication!"

Kaz's response collapsed into a tangle of discordant sounds when Jensen hauled Jared in behind him; they conveyed Kaz's 'what the fuck?' quite succinctly. 

"I'll make it up to you later," Jensen promised. "But right now, he needs treatment for ingemination before he ceases to exist, so I'd appreciate your help."

Kaz trilled out another choice phrase or two, but the hum of the chronorestorator started up a moment later, so Jensen figured he wasn't too put out.

"Thanks, Kaz," he said, then turned to look at Jared. "Oh, what now?"

Jared, for his part, was gaping at everything, his eyes as wide as saucers. "You said you weren't an alien!" he said accusingly.

"And I'm not. Come on." Jared was too busy staring to move himself, so Jensen started shoving him in the right direction, ignoring Jared's protests.

"If you're not an alien, why do you have a spaceship?" Jared demanded, as Jensen shoved him into the bathroom and onto the med chair. "And why does it look like a stalker van?"

"It's not a spaceship." Jensen buckled Jared in, working fast so that he could get the idiot secured before he realized he was stuck. "It's a time machine."

"A- hey!" Jared pulled belatedly at the straps holding him down, and shot Jensen a betrayed look that was pure artistry at work. He must have got away with so much shit as a child.

"This'll only take a minute. Don't mind the tingling sensation."

"The- sonofabitch!" Jared jolted like someone had just goosed him, as Jensen turned the chronorestorator on him. He watched Jared writhe around while the beam restored his chronological integrity, the low grade glow of ingemination finally fading as Jared's entire existence stopped coming apart at the seams. 

He turned off the machine after the last of the fracture marks had smoothed over. The room felt strangely intimate in the silence afterwards.

Finally, Jared wet his lips. "Am I fixed now?" He had very striking eyes, Jensen couldn't help but notice.

And he'd asked Jensen a question. Jensen nodded. "You're good to go."

"Awesome. You going to let me up?" Jared asked, after several heartbeats of Jensen staring at him like an idiot.

"Shit, here, let me-" He stepped forward to release the restraints, and was appalled to feel his cheeks prickling with the threat of a blush when his fingers brushed against Jared's skin in the process. Was he really that starved for human contact?

"So," Jared said, once Jensen had released him and retreated to a safer distance. "Is this where I get to politely request my explanation? Or am I about to have my memory erased?"

Jensen thought about it. "Neither. This is when I get to yell at you for being an idiot."

Jared looked almost comically put out by that. "What?"

"Do you have _any_ idea how close you just came to getting yourself erased from existence?" Jensen demanded, relishing both the words and the emotions that they stirred up inside him. Frustrated anger was so much more tolerable than attraction.  
   
Unfortunately, Jared was apparently more than capable of giving back as good as he good.

"How am I supposed to?" he said. "I don't know anything about invisible threats in the middle of public parks!"

"I told you to stay back!"

"Oh, so I'm just supposed to take the word of the weird guy in the park?"

"Considering that you're the one who bothered me first, yes!" Jensen crossed his arms over his chest with a huff. "Probably would have done the gene pool a favour if I'd let you get erased."

Instead of taking offense, Jared just looked thoughtful. "You keep doing that."

"Doing what?"

"You keep saying 'erased'. Do you just not like the word 'killed' or is there something more to it?"

Honestly, Jensen didn't owe him any more of an explanation than he'd already given. His job was very much on a 'need to know' basis, and Jared, by virtue of no longer being under threat of being removed from history, really didn't need to know. Which did absolutely nothing to explain why Jensen squared his shoulders and sighed. 

"I'm not talking about this in the bathroom," he said, ignoring Kaz's surprised hum. "We may as well sit on the couch."

Jared proved himself to be less of a fool than Jensen had previously thought, because he sprang up immediately and wordlessly, and followed Jensen back out into the main room. His expression upon entering was somehow even more awestruck than it had been the first time; Jensen decided to ascribe it to his being not entirely temporally present on his first trip through.

"This is a time machine," Jared said, in a tone that was somewhere between a question and a statement. 

"It is." Jensen eased himself down on the couch with a sigh, feeling entirely too wrung out for the relatively short amount of time he'd spent being active and saving lives today. He blamed Jared, obviously.

"And you have a time machine because…" Jared prompted as he sat down on the couch to Jensen's left. Jensen twitched his leg out of the way to keep from bumping into Jared's obscenely long legs.

"Because I'm a Chrono Tech," Jensen said. "It's my job to deal with any… problems that crop up in the fabric of time. Which, obviously, requires a time machine."

"A Chrono Tech," Jared repeated slowly. "Is that, like, a species?"

Jensen bit back a smile. "It's a job. Chronotic Technician, officially. And before you start getting the wrong idea, it's not nearly as glamorous as you're probably thinking. I'm basically a mechanic. Just," he made a vague gesture with one hand. "Y'know, for time instead of cars."

"Okay," Jared said, sounding a little dubious. "And you were in the park because… there's something wrong with time? That you can fix?"

A bit simplistic, perhaps, but not inaccurate. "More or less," Jensen agreed, leaning back and slinging an arm over the back of the couch. "I was investigating a time ripple, a particularly nasty one, as it turns out. That's what hit you."

Jared's right hand crept across to touch his left forearm. "What did it do? It felt like I was being turned inside out."

"A time ripple's caused by time trying to fold in on itself when something in the established time stream changes," Jensen explained. "Usually, small changes don't have that much impact on existence as a whole, but a bigger change means that all of history has to try and adapt to the ramifications of the change, which causes tears in the fabric of time. These tears manifest as ripples that rewrite the history of anything that comes into contact with them. Like you, in this case."

"Okay, I understand pretty much none of that," Jared admitted, a lost look on his face. "Sorry. Can you dumb it down for me?"

He'd never had to explain this before. Jensen thought about it. "Did you ever read those Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid?"

Jared blinked, looking taken aback by the topic shift. "I- yes? Why?"

"You know how, when you get to an end of the story, you can start again and make different choices, and then you get a different ending than you had the first time?"

Jared nodded. "And time is like that?"

"Kind of, yes. History is linear, right? Events occur, which causes other events to occur. So everything that has already happened up to this point affects what's happening now. But what happens when time _isn't_ linear? If you look at it a certain way, all of time is sort of happening all at once. A time machine can take me to any point in time and then I can live it like it's right now. So there must be a non-linear aspect of time. You with me so far?"

"Yes?" Jared said, not sounding entirely convinced. "I think so."

"Okay, so, imagine that something changed in one of those other time periods. Like, fuck I dunno, say America never dropped the A-bomb. That would make a huge difference to the history of America, and the world. But since there's already a timeline in existence where America did, the entire time stream from then onwards would need to rewrite itself. And _that's_ what causes ripples."

There was a momentary silence as Jared puzzled through that. "So, there was an invisible rip in time in some random park in Miami, and it's trying to rewrite history to make up for a change somewhere in the past?"

Jensen gave him a thumbs up. "You've got it."

Jared's answering laugh was a little weak. "I think I'm grasping on to the edges of understanding, more than actually understanding anything. So what happened to me?"

"Oh," Jensen said. "The ripple was trying to write you out of existence because whatever caused it would change history enough that you wouldn't be the person you are now."

"Jesus. Okay, then." Jared took a deep breath. "And your job is to fix it, right?"

"Yep."

"And what happens if you don't?"

"Depending on the severity of the issue? Potentially the collapse of the universe."

"What?" Jared's voice went up to an embarrassingly high octave. He coughed. "Please tell me you're kidding."

Jensen shook his head. "No. Well, I'm maybe exaggerating a little. There's not many moments in history that would have _that_ much impact on the time stream. But it would still cause a lot of trouble. And the management wouldn't really appreciate it."

"The mana-" Jared started, but Jensen wasn't interested in having this conversation, so he cut him off hurriedly.

"But I am on the clock right now, so I'd better get back to doing my actual job, now that you're temporally sound again." 

"Oh!" Jared said, sounding flustered and awkward and young. If he was even legal to drink, Jensen would be stunned. "I didn't mean to, um, get you in trouble or, or anything."

Jensen waved a dismissive hand. "It's fine. The pylons should keep people away while I sort out the problem."

"Oh, well that's good." Jared fidgeted a little in his chair. "So, um, what should I- should I go? Or is it memory wipe time now?"

Jensen rolled his eyes. "This isn't _Men in Black_ , Jared." He rose smoothly to his feet, and headed over to where he'd dropped his kit on the way in. "You're free to go."

"Is that really a good idea? What if I tell somebody?"

"Watch me quiver in my boots. You're on spring break. Anyone you tell is just going to laugh at you for not being able to hold your liquor and having vivid drunk dreams."

"I-" There was a pause, then a sigh. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"Of course I'm right." Jensen thumbed through his sketchbook, tugging out the sketches that best captured the shape and colour of the ripple. Now that he was looking at them directly, he had to admit the slightest bit of trepidation.

This ripple was big. And angry. And a violent mix of purple and orange that boded no good to anyone.

"Um," Jared ventured, and Jensen jumped a little, startled.

He twisted over one shoulder to look at Jared, who was still sitting on the couch. "Why aren't you moving yet?"

Jared went scarlet. "Uh, I, that's-"

"Oh, never mind." Deciding that Jared could stay sitting there if he liked, Jensen carried his sketch book over to the analysis board. "Kaz," he called, and felt the air shift as Kaz took active notice. "I hope you're looking for a challenge, because this one's a doozy."

"Are you...?" Jared ventured. 

"Talking to my time machine? Yes, I am." Jensen offered him a sunny, profoundly insincere smile. "I wouldn't worry though." 

"Oh, well that's good," Jared said, a little thinly. "And why not?"

Jensen smirked at him. "Because my time machine talks back. Isn't that right, Kaz?" 

Jared nearly jumped high enough to hit the roof when Kaz gave an emphatic chime in response. 

"Holy - what the hell was that?"

"That's Kaz. He's a time machine. Kaz, this is Jared. I'm sorry he's got no manners, but you know what temporals are like."

"Hey!" Jared looked around, as though he might find a face hiding in the rafters or something. "Hi, Kaz, I'm sorry if I was rude. Jensen's really bad at explaining things."

Kaz laughed at that, the sound chiming through the air. He added a note of agreement on the end, and Jensen scowled.

"Sure, sure. Laugh it up, chuckles." Jensen slid the sketches into the reader. "As long as you can work at the same time."

The couch creaked as Jared shifted to peer over the back. "What are you doing?"

Jensen leaned back against the counter with a sigh. "Kaz is going to use the information I've given him about the ripple to isolate its point of origin. Ripples are kind of like fingerprints: no two are exactly alike."

"That was a good comparison," Jared said, almost approvingly. As if Jensen needed approval from this clueless kid. "I've got a question though."

"Only one?" A glance at the output screen, made it clear that Kaz was still working on the ID, so Jensen shrugged. "Go for it."

"So the ripple's a sign that there's something wrong somewhere in the past right?" Jensen nodded, and Jared started talking a little faster, as if building up steam. "But why does it appear now, in 2004, if the problem's from, like, a thousand years ago? If ripple's here, doesn't that mean that the problem is here too? Why else would it be here?" 

"This is just where the problem's bleeding through into the time stream." Jared was back to looking puzzled, so Jensen scrounged through his brain for an appropriate simile. They seemed to be his best bet of explaining in a way that Jared could understand. "It's like… when your roof has a leak, yeah? And it's coming in through your kitchen ceiling, but then the roofing guy comes in and the hole in the roof is actually over the bedroom. Time is sort of like that. The spatial location of the source should be pretty close to where we are now, but there's no way of knowing how far away we are temporally. That's what Kaz is trying to-"

Kaz interrupted him to trill out his findings, and Jensen cut himself off to take a look at the readout. His shoulders slumped.

"You can't be any more specific?" he asked, and Kaz's answering chime was apologetic. Jensen patted the console. "I know, it's not your fault. We'll just have to keep working at it."

"What's wrong?" Jared's voice was closer than before, and Jensen turned to find that he'd got up from the couch and was now standing a few feet away, looking at the panels of flashing lights and interactive displays with a strange sort of fascinated incomprehension.

"It's proving a little difficult to pinpoint a specific date," Jensen admitted. Probably because he'd been interrupted before finishing his sketches. "I'll have to go back and-"

Kaz interrupted with a suggestion that made Jensen blink, then smack his forehead with an open palm. Why hadn't he thought of that?

"Um, Jensen?" Jared asked. "Are… you okay?"

"I'm fine. Kaz was just reminding me that I'm an idiot."

Kaz protested that, and Jensen held up his hands in surrender.

"Okay, okay, I know you didn't mean it like that."

Jared was staring at him like he'd grown an extra head sometime while he wasn't looking. "Um…"

"You say that a lot," Jensen observed. "Have you noticed?"

"Maybe if I hadn't met a time travelling mechanic and his musical time machine, I wouldn't have to 'um' so much, ever think of that?"

Jensen snorted. "You seem like the type to 'um' when ordering coffee. I hardly think that Kaz and I are the cause of it."

Kaz's agreeing chime was just the faintest bit mocking. 

"Be nice, Kaz," Jensen said, gently chiding. "He doesn't really like strangers," he confided to Jared.

Kaz helpfully pointed out that Jensen didn't usually, either. Jensen ignored him.

"Is Kaz, er, alive?" Jared asked, fumbling awkwardly through the question.

Jensen shrugged and gave Jared the same answer that Jeff had given him. "Depends on your definition of alive."

"Oh, thank you, Jensen," Jared said tartly. "That was _oh_ so helpful."

Jensen huffed. "Does he have a consciousness? Yes. Does it work in any way even remotely similar to ours? Not so much. But, if you're going to insist on asking, yes he's alive."

"And Kaz is a 'he'?"

"That's what he tells me, so I'm going to listen. Are you done with asking overly personal questions about my time machine now? Because I need your help."

As he'd hoped it would, that sparked Jared's attention immediately. "Really? I mean, sure, whatever you need. Uh," he faltered suddenly. "Maybe not _whatever_ you need, actually, because I'm not down with being cannibalized for parts or anything, but-"

Jensen's sigh was beyond long-suffering. "I just need to borrow your hand for a minute. _Yes_ , with the rest of you still attached, before you ask. I need you to put your hand on the scanner like this," he said, splaying his own hand flat to demonstrate. "It won't hurt, I promise."

"Oh, sure, that's fine. Um, why am I doing this?"

Jensen watched with half an eye while Jared pressed his hand against the scanner, most of his attention on programming the correct command sequence into the computer. "You came into contact with the ripple, so Kaz can use your temporal signature to help isolate the source."

Jared shook his head. "And you wonder why I say 'um' a lot. You do realize that I don't understand a good half of what you say, right?"

Jensen shrugged. "It's not my fault you temporals are so woefully undereducated."

"Hey!" Jared protested. "I'll have you know I'm in the top 10% in my program!"

"And yet you still don't know a damn thing about temporal mechanics," Jensen said, with a mock sigh. "Tragic, really. You- hmm."

"What?" Jared craned his neck, trying to see the monitor over Jensen's shoulder. "What is it? Can I see?"

God, were all temporals so immature? Jensen was sure he hadn't been this irritating at Jared's age. "Could you just... stand there for a minute, okay?"

God bless any deity that was listening, because Jared did. Ten miles past confused, by the look of him, but Jensen didn't really care as long as he was standing still. 

"Okay, Kaz," he said, turning to the console. "Looks like a surface scan isn't gonna cut it. Do your thing."

It was only a few moments before Kaz had the answer. Jensen skimmed the information on the output monitor, frowning. 

"Um," Jared ventured. "Can I move now?" 

"One sec," Jensen said distractedly. "Kaz, are you sure? A ripple that big must have been caused by something seriously important, but this date isn't flagged in the database."

Kaz's affirmation was tinged with an indignation that Jensen figured he probably deserved. 

"Right, right, sorry. Okay, so this must be something that wasn't actually a big deal, but might become one if it goes differently. Crosscheck the date and the location with anything that could have had a large impact. Near-miss accidents and stuff."

"Jensen," Jared's voice said.

Kaz threw up a couple of possibilities, and Jensen skimmed them thoughtfully, scowling at the imprecision of doing things this way. "I fucking hate guesswork," he muttered, and Kaz echoed the sentiment wholeheartedly. "None of these seem like good candidates, but we'll probably have to check fucking all of them if we can't narrow it down. Ideas?"

Kaz chimed out another suggestion, and Jensen nodded. 

"It's worth looking into." He chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. "Add in a general search for celebrities while you're at it. Yeah, I know that," he added, when Kaz pointed out how many more possibilities that would add. "But it's statistically more likely that something important enough to cause a ripple like that has historically significant people involved." 

"Seriously, Jensen, how long do you need me to stand here?"

The list of celebrity-related events was, to put it mildly, fucking massive. Jensen ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "Yikes, you're right, that's way too many. Can you cross-reference with the incidents and near misses list?"

Kaz didn't bother answering, just started generating a new list which, to Jensen's relief, was much more manageable in length. He shifted forwards, bracing both hands on the console as he read through it. 

A frustrated huff came from somewhere behind him. "You're not even listening, are you?"

Jensen's eyes dropped to the next event on the list, and he stilled, a million disparate thoughts coalescing in his mind with a satisfying click. "Oh shit," he breathed. "Oh, Kaz, that's - fuck. This is it."

"Jensen!" Jared snapped.

Jensen whirled to find Jared with his hand still pressed to the scanner and a highly unimpressed look on his face.

"Do you know who Franklin Roosevelt is?" Jensen blurted.

Jared, who'd clearly been gearing up for a tirade, faltered at the question. "I- what?"

"Franklin Roosevelt," Jensen repeated, practically thrumming with the certainty that he had it right. "Do you know who he is?"

"I don't think so?" Jared frowned. "I mean, I know Teddy Roosevelt, obviously, but I don't know a Franklin Roosevelt." 

"Franklin Delano Roosevelt?" Jensen suggested. "FDR?"

Jared shrugged. "Not ringing any bells, sorry. But I'm not really that good at history, so I'm probably not the best person to- why are you vibrating?"

"Because I know what it is." Jensen stared at the information on the monitor, hardly able to believe what they were dealing with. "Revisionists. Has to be. No way this could happen by chance."

"Would someone please explain what's going on?" Jared demanded. "Kaz? Can you teach this guy how to have a normal conversation?"

Kaz's reply was immediate, defensive and more than a little rude. Jensen was glad that Jared couldn't understand it.

He coughed into his fist to avoid laughing. "He, uh, would rather not get involved, actually."

"Well, then I guess it's up to you to explain things, huh?" Something almost sheepish crept across Jared's face. "Please? I know I'm not really involved, but I'm really curious now. What's a revisionist? What did they do?"

Oh, what the hell. It wasn't like it mattered whether Jared knew or not. And it was kind of nice to have someone around to witness his brilliance.

"Revisionist is the term we use to describe people who deliberately try to change history," he said. "There are groups of them all over the time stream, trying to prevent history from following its natural course based on their own ideas about what would be 'best' for the human race. It's part of my job to stop them from succeeding."

"Wooow." Jared's expression was rapt. "You're like a time crime fighter!"

"What? Don't be stupid," Jensen huffed, flustered and trying not to show it. "It's not like I'm facing down bad guys or anything like that. I just put things back the way they're supposed to be."

"Like with this Roosevelt guy?"

Jensen rolled his eyes. "This 'Roosevelt guy' is Franklin D. Roosevelt: the 32nd President of the United States. His tenure spanned the Great Depression and the entirety of the Second World War. He's widely considered to be one of the three best presidents America's ever had." Jensen offered Jared a crooked grin. "And you still don't remember him."

"But-" Jared's face was baffled. "That's not true!"

"Okay," Jensen said agreeably. "Then how did America weather the Great Depression? Why did it enter World War II?"

"That's-" Jared stopped. Frowned. "I don't know. I feel like I do, but the answer's not there. Why don't I know?"

"It's an aftereffect of your run-in with the ripple," Jensen explained. "The ripple was created by a timeline in which FDR never became president and, since it tried to rewrite you to match that alternate reality, your brain is trying to reconcile two conflicting sets of historical memory. Hence, you don't remember who he is, even though you would have learned it in school."

"Okay," Jared said, with surprising equanimity. "What?" he added, when Jensen raised an eyebrow at him. "This is far from the weirdest thing that's happened to me today. So how do I get my memories back?"

" _You_ don't do anything. Kaz and I have to go back in time and put things back the way they're supposed to be."

"Huh. So what is this big important event that changed history, exactly? You never said."

Jensen took a deep breath. "On February 15, 1933, an Italian immigrant named Giuseppe Zangara unsuccessfully tried to assassinate the President-elect, Franklin D. Roosevelt, during a public speech in Miami. It was a huge news event at the time, but not overly impactful on the world in your day." He looked Jared dead in the eyes. 

"Only now, someone's gone back in time and made sure that Zangara didn't miss."

"Okay, explain this to me one more time," Jared said, and Jensen barely refrained from groaning aloud.

"Remind me why you're still here?" he demanded. He made a shooing motion towards the door, most of his attention on the tablet in his lap. "Go forth and enjoy your spring break, or whatever."

Kaz chimed an irritated agreement.

"Who says I'm not enjoying myself right now?" Jared asked, sounding bizarrely sincere. "Are you going to explain or not?"

Jensen breathed a longsuffering sigh. "What don't you understand? The part where someone has changed the past by making a failed attempt to kill FDR turn out successfully, or the part where I'm going to go back and fix things before the ripples caused by the assassination of one of America's most influential presidents turn the entire time stream inside out? Because from where I'm sitting, they both seem pretty clear."

"The part where you're sitting!" Jared said, with a flailing arm that Jensen caught in his peripheral vision. "What are you even doing?" he demanded. "Shouldn't you be, like, going forth and fixing things?"

"I'm doing research, young padawan," Jensen said, opening another link. "If I just go blundering in, I'll only make things worse. Kaz's databanks contain a copy of the most detailed history of mankind ever compiled. It makes for a lot of reading."

"But you said that ripple's going to, like, eat the world or whatever! What if it happens while you're researching?"

"Gee, Jared, I dunno. What can I possibly do when Kaz is a goddamn time machine?" Jensen shook his head. "Calm down, idiot."

Jared subsided some at that, although Jensen could still feel his jittery nerves jangling at the edges of his awareness. All that pacing was getting irritating.

"If you're not leaving, could you at least sit down?" Jensen snapped, throwing a glare at him that froze Jared in his tracks. "I'd be able to get this done sooner if you weren't so distracting."

"I'm not doing anything," Jared protested, although he sat down nonetheless, their knees nearly touching. Jensen should probably get some more furniture; Jeff had taken his chair, which only left the couch. "Are you always this touchy?"

"Only when complete strangers who I helped out of the goodness of my heart return my kindness by refusing to get out of my home," Jensen snarked back, and regretted it immediately when Jared's eyebrows flew up. "Forget it."

"Wait," Jared said instead, because life was profoundly unfair. "Kaz is your home?" Jensen kept his eyes glued to his tablet, refusing to acknowledge the way Jared was now looking around the cluttered space with a very different lens. "I thought Kaz was, like, your utility van or something."

Kaz protested that, quite loudly.

Jensen shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I have a place," he admitted. "But I spend most of my time on the job. All Chrono Techs do," he added, because he could practically feel Jared's pity and he was not fucking having it. "It means that I spend my downtime enjoying the highlights of history, which is a damn sight better than mowing my lawn or whatever it is you temporals do. Can you please shut up now?"

There was a momentary pause, and Jensen was surprised when Jared's response was to mutter a short 'sorry', then fall obediently silent. Not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, he went back to reading, trying to ignore how hyperaware he was of Jared just sitting there. 

It was different from sharing space with Jeff. Jensen assumed that that was entirely because Jared was not, in fact, Jeff. Surely sharing space was always different based on whom he was sharing it with, right? It wasn't like he had a whole lot of experience to compare it with, though, so it was hard to know for sure why Jared was so much harder to ignore than Jeff had ever been. 

His eyes lingered on the supple curve of Jared's neck, the soft way his unruly hair curled around his ears, and Jensen felt his cheeks warm. He'd not really been paying much attention before, but Jared was rather attractive wasn't he? And Jensen didn't exactly have a type, whatever that was, but he could admit that Jared was awfully captivating for a skinny idiot in board shorts.

Was that why Jensen was so distracted?

Jared caught him looking and flashed a beaming, dimpled grin in Jensen's direction. Jensen jerked his eyes back down to the tablet, heart beating faster than he really appreciated. Oh, this was so much worse than he'd thought.

Was he actually attracted to this nosy, noisy child? 

God, it was like being a teenager again.

But, no matter what he'd told Jared, he didn't actually have all forever to get this job done, so he shut out his awareness of Jared's presence as best as he could and focused on learning every damn thing he could about Zangara's attempted assassination of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The work went faster after that. Eventually, when he reached the point where he felt about as prepared as he was going to get, he shut down the tablet and stretched, wincing at the residual ache in his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jared perk up.

"All done?" he asked, the words bursting out like he might actually explode if he didn't get out at least one of the questions brimming up inside him.

Jensen dragged a tired hand over his face. "As done as I'm going to get."

Jared was doing an awfully good impression of an excited puppy right now. "So now you're going to go back to 1933?"

"That's the plan," he agreed, idly thinking that if Jared had a tail, it would be wagging right now.

"Cool," Jared declared, staring at him from way too close.

Feeling dangerously out of his depth, Jensen stared back.

Kaz chimed in to ask Jensen why it was taking him so long to make Jared leave. Jensen would have liked to know the answer to that question himself.

Normally, he had no problem telling people to get lost. But now he found himself feeling strangely reluctant for reasons he couldn't quite name. Was he worried about hurting Jared's feelings? Seriously?

Kaz prompted him again, less patiently this time. Jensen took a breath.

"So," he started, only to have Jared cut him off.

"I was thinking," Jared ventured, sounding unaccountably shy at the idea.

Even though he'd only known Jared for an hour, this was more than enough to make Jensen wary of whatever was coming next. "About what?"

Jared bit his lip. "Can I come with you?"

Jensen stared at him, completely shocked.

Jared was already barreling onwards, the words tumbling out of his mouth like a dam had broken. "I mean, I know I'm not a Chrono Tech, or whatever, but I can be useful! I'm athletic! I was the star centre on my high school's basketball team, and I'm smart! I'm majoring in Engineering and, yeah, my history's not so great, but I'm good at memorizing. And you could probably do with a partner. Not that you can't handle yourself!" he hurried to clarify. "But if you're going up against one of these revisionist people, isn't it better to have someone watching your back? And, uh, I'd like to help," he finished lamely, almost visibly deflating as he ran out of words. "So? What do you say?"

Jensen should have said no. Or perhaps 'hell no'. Or maybe 'are you insane?'. Alternatively, he could have just laughed himself sick and kicked Jared out on his ass. 

Jared's stunning list of qualifications aside, it wasn't like Jensen actually needed help. This was far from the first time that Jensen had squared off against a revisionist's handiwork; he could take care of himself. And Jared was still a temporal. There was really no good reason to agree. 

But. 

But this was Jensen's first big solo job, and he'd never admit it to anyone, but he wasn't sure if he could live up to Jeff's expectations of him. And Jared was so earnest and eager and, God, so young and naive, but still more than a little gorgeous. And, God damn it, but Jensen had spent the last half century with Jeff for constant company, and now he was really fucking lonely, okay? So sue him. 

Jared gave him a pleading look. "Please?" 

Fuck it, Jensen wasn't strong enough to say no. 

"If you die, it's not my problem," he said, holding up a hand to forestall Jared's glee. "And you're not allowed to make any pop culture time travel jokes."

Jared held up one hand and drew a cross over his heart. "Promise."

Jensen rolled his eyes. "You're not fooling anyone with your attempt to act serious. You're about to bust with excitement, aren't you?"

A huge, dimpled smile broke out across Jared's face. "You kidding? I'm about to go _back in time_. I don't think I've ever been so excited in my entire life."

"Calm down there, sparky. This is _my_ job, which makes anything you do my responsibility. So you'd better listen to every damn thing I tell you, okay? I am not beyond leaving you in the past to live to death if you fuck things up."

"Is it a compliment to tell you that I genuinely believe you on that?" Jared asked, before raising three fingers in a Scout salute. "I promise not to get in your way, and to listen to what you say."

Jensen wondered if he had ever been as self-confident as Jared was. He doubted it. "Like you were ever a Scout. Here," he said, passing Jared his tablet and jerking a thumb at the cockpit. "Park your ass in a flight chair and educate yourself before we go."

"What are you doing?" Jared asked, twisting around to watch as Jensen stood and made his way to his bedroom.

"Getting ready. Go. Read. There will be a test."

Jared threw off a sloppy salute. "Aye, aye, captain!"

Jensen managed to hold his neutral expression until the bedroom door swung safely shut behind him. Then he slumped against the wall and put his face in his hands. "Oh my god, Kaz, what am I doing?"

Kaz's answering chime indicated that his guess was as good as Jensen's, but things usually worked out when Jensen followed his gut, so it'd probably be okay.

"You think so?" Jensen asked, taking comfort in Kaz's unquestioning support. A few deep breaths got his erratic pulse under control, and Jensen was feeling almost as in control as he was pretending to be by the time he pushed himself upright. "It's just one job. I can keep him alive for that long." 

Kaz trilled out an agreement, and Jensen smiled.

"Thanks, Kaz." He squared his shoulders. "I guess we'd better start getting organized."

When he entered the cockpit 20 minutes later, a kit over each shoulder, he found Jared lounging on the chair that had always been Jensen's when Jeff was around, long legs stretched out far enough that they disappeared under the front console. The difference between Jared's sprawl and the compact way that Jensen himself had always folded himself into the same seat was jarring.

Jared glanced up from the tablet, a faint frown line marring his forehead. "This Zangara guy seems a little kooky."

"Just a little?" Jensen asked, sliding into Jeff's seat behind the wheel. He was more used to now, after six months of being the driver, but there was still that moment of oddness every time. The fact that he still thought of it as 'Jeff's seat' was probably telling, as well. "He tried to kill the president-elect because he hated capitalists and then asked for a round 100 years on his sentence instead of the 80 they were giving him. As far as descriptive terms go, 'kooky' seems a little on the mild side."

"Fair enough."

"Okay, pop quiz time," Jensen said, something twinging in him when he remembered the number of times Jeff had said that exact thing to him before a new job. "Give me all the major details of the event in two minutes or less. And no looking at the tablet."

"Wh-um, shit." Jared fumbled to turn the tablet off, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. "Okay, um, this Zangara guy went to see this other Roosevelt give a speech in Bayfront Park in Miami-"

"Time of day?" Jensen interrupted.

"Oh, at night, I'm pretty sure?" Jensen nodded, so Jared continued. "Zangara stood on a chair in the third row and tried to shoot Roosevelt while he was giving his speech. He missed, and then a bunch of people in the crowd, like, jumped him." Something more sober crept into Jared's voice as he added, "He shot wildly into the crowd and hit five people, including the mayor of Chicago who later died in the hospital."

"You forgot to mention that he missed the first shot because the chair he was standing on wobbled. And the woman who was credited with stopping him was Lillian Cross."

Jared raised an eyebrow. "Do those count as 'major' details?"

Jensen shrugged. "They might be. Time is weird, man." He paused, then awkwardly added, "Not bad for a first try, though."

Jared beamed at him. He was like a big puppy, seriously. "So we're going to the moment when the time stream got messed up?"

Jensen shook his head. "A couple of hours earlier," he corrected. "To get the lay of the land and whatever. I don't fancy fumbling our way through the park in the dark. Besides, unless we plan to literally fall out of the sky and land on top of Zangara to mess up his aim, showing up at the last second isn't going to do us much good."

"That'd be pretty cool though."

Jensen ignored him in favour of punching the date into the console, counting on Kaz to convert it into the coordinates he needed to get them there. He glanced at Jared. "Ready?"

Jared grinned broadly. "Hit it." 

"Ready, Kaz?"

Kaz chimed an enthusiastic affirmative, and Jensen found himself grinning along with both of them as he activated the time circuits. 

The world outside didn't change a great deal: the shops were still there, just whitewashed and decorated with awnings and hanging signs, and the cars were still plentiful, just boxy and dark in design. There were more people walking the sidewalks, which was a nuisance but not surprising, given the decade.

"Oh," Jared said, when Jensen sat back and unclipped his seatbelt. "Is that it?"

"That's it," Jensen agreed, leaning over to check the dateline. "Perfect as always, Kaz. Well done."

Jared looked out the wind screen at February 1933, his expression nonplussed. "I was expecting something a little more…"

"Trust me," Jensen said. "I know. Come on," he said, climbing to his feet. "Let's get moving."

"But you didn't even need to get it up to 88 miles per hour!" Jared protested, laughing. "I feel so betrayed!"

Jensen gave him a narrow look. "What did I say about pop culture references?"

"That they're awesome?" Jared suggested, with a wide-eyed innocence that was not at all convincing. 

"You should probably shut your face before I decide to leave you here."

"So grumpy," Jared chided, grinning like the smug jackass he was.

So Jensen threw one of the kits at his face.

"Supplies," he said sweetly, not even bothering to pretend he wasn't amused by Jared's flailing squawk. "Just in case we get separated."

"You're a real giver," Jared shot back, not quite hitting the deadpan tone he was clearly aiming for.

"Naturally." Jensen shouldered his own kit and raised an eyebrow at Jared. "You ready for this?"

"Um," Jared said. He gestured to his flip flops and _Our Lady Peace_ shirt with a smile. "Don't suppose you've got a change of clothes that would fit me? I think I might draw some unwanted attention like this."

"Oh, right," Jensen realized. "You need a TAC, sorry." He lifted one off the shelf and held it out. "Here you go."

Jared stepped closer to accept it. "It's a bracelet?" he said, mostly a question.

"It's a visual distortion field," Jensen corrected.

"Amazing. And once more in English?"

Jensen rolled his eyes. "It's temporal camouflage, if those words aren't too big for your brain to understand."

"Hey!"

"Just like-" Jensen glanced down and blinked when he was met with the sight of that godawful Hawaiian shirt instead of his coveralls. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Peals of laughter rang through the air.

"Jackass!" Jensen yelled at Kaz, who only laughed harder in response. "You couldn't have said something?"

Jared blinked at him. "I've missed something."

Grumbling to himself, Jensen switched off his TAC gear, and felt mildly better when it made Jared's jaw drop.

"Wh-what just happened to your clothes?" he demanded, flailing a hand at Jensen. "They changed!"

Jensen held up his wrist to show off the black band wrapped there. "This is a TAC. It stands for Temporal Assimilation Circuit. It identifies my current temporal-spatial location and creates a camouflage shell to match. Sort of like a hologram that layers on top of whatever I'm actually wearing. It lets me blend in everywhere without needing an entire closet full of costumes to do it."

Jared frowned. "So you weren't wearing a Hawaiian shirt before?" he asked, sounding obscurely disappointed by the thought.

Jensen snorted. "Not in a million years."

"But I felt the fabric earlier when you were dragging me here?"

"I didn't drag you anywhere," Jensen said primly. "And just because it's a hologram, that doesn't mean you can't touch it. Here, watch." 

Jensen reactivated his TAC and made sure he had a smug expression ready for when his coveralls morphed into a double-breasted suit jacket and wide-legged trousers. He reached up to grab the fedora that was now resting on his head and passed it to a dumbfounded Jared. 

Jared took the hat gingerly, awe scrawled clearly across his face. "It feels so real," he marveled, fingers running along the brim in a way that Jensen definitely didn't find distracting.

"That's the point," Jensen said, though not unkindly. He took his hat back and gestured to the TAC still in Jared's hand. "Give yours a go."

That got Jared moving in a hurry. He fumbled the TAC onto his wrist and, with some guidance from Jensen, turned it on. Then he looked down.

"Wow, this is so cool!" he exclaimed, laughing as he twisted and turned to look at the suit he was wearing. Jensen, who couldn't help but notice how nicely the broad shoulders and snug waist flattered Jared's figure, busied himself with reclaiming his kit, now masquerading as a somewhat battered briefcase. 

"Yes, yes, very nice. Can we go now? We've got a job to do, remember?"

Jared gave an exaggerated sigh. "You're going to be the lame kind of boss, aren't you?"

"Damn straight. Now move your ass and don't forget to grab your kit."

Kaz was disguised as a Ford truck, this time; Jensen glanced around covertly as they stepped onto the pavement, but it seemed like no one was taking any notice of the two guys in suits climbing out of a delivery vehicle. Small mercies.

"Woah!" Jared breathed, not quite loudly enough for Jensen to yell at him for it. "What happened to your stalker van? Is it the same as our suits? One of those temporal camo things?"

Jensen nodded. "Got it in one."

"Huh," Jared said, giving Kaz a critical once-over.

Jensen wasn't even sure he wanted to know. "Dare I ask?"

"I thought I'd imagined it, but Kaz is definitely bigger on the inside than the outside."

Oh, for God's sake. "First _Back to the Future_ and now _Doctor Who_?" Jensen demanded. "Really?"

Jared looked confused. "What's _Doctor Who_?"

Jensen did some mental math, and cursed. "Sorry, I forgot how old you are. I'll forgive you for your unintentional pop culture reference."

"Thank you?"

"You're welcome. And to answer your question, Kaz needs to be smaller on the outside because parking something the size of a house on the side of the road is going to cause a sensation, no matter what temporal filter you throw over it."

"But how does it work?" Jared asked.

Jensen shrugged. "No fucking clue. I'm just the hired help. Coming?"

He set off for the park without waiting for Jared, and listened to him scramble to follow.

"How can you not know?" Jared demanded, once he'd caught up. "Aren't you curious about how Kaz can actually take up less physical space than he needs to?"

"Mmm, not really." 

Jared flailed his arms. "Seriously? I can't believe that."

"I'm not an engineering student like you. I don't really care how it works as long as it does." He waved a dismissive hand. "Ask Kaz, if you're that interested."

Jared made a complicated face. "Kind of hard when I don't speak time machine. You gonna translate for me?"

"Nope," Jensen said, popping the 'p' with relish. "Guess you'll have to live in ignorance."

"You are such a dick," Jared said, sounding almost admiring. 

Jensen flashed him a smirk. "All part of my charm. Right," he said then, brandishing the map that Kaz had printed out for him. "Let's get this shit done."

All told, it took them the better part of an hour to scope out the location of Roosevelt's speech to Jensen's satisfaction. Thanks to Kaz's exhaustive notes, he knew exactly where Zangara would be standing, which side the secret service would come in from to arrest him, where in the crowd the stray bullets would land. It was all vital knowledge. When the time arrived, he'd need to be familiar enough with the scene to be able to navigate it with his eyes closed, otherwise they'd never get the job done amidst the dark and the noise and the crowd. 

Jared followed gamely along behind him, absorbing everything. Jensen genuinely had no idea how much help he'd be, but he had to admit that it was nice not to be alone. 

"Your job doesn't have a whole lot of action in it, does it?" Jared asked, once Jensen had determined that he was as prepared as he was going to get and they'd set about finding a place to wait until the speech started. The streets were starting to fill with people eager for a glimpse of the President-elect, and Jensen shifted closer to Jared, not wanting to lose him in the crowd.

"Depends on how many things go wrong," he said wryly. "And what historical event I'm dealing with. It's kind of hard to avoid getting shot at during a Civil War battle, for example."

Jared whistled. "I'll bet. Hey, so what's the craziest thing you've- oh shit, that's him!" 

Jared bolted without warning, plunging into the crowd before Jensen had even figured out what was going on.

"Ja- damn!" Jensen took off after him, glad of Jared's height since it let him keep eyes on him even in the crowd.

"I'm on it!" Jared shouted back, because 'low profile' was apparently not something he was capable of. People were staring openly as Jared shoved his way past, faces painted with shock at the impropriety. Just ahead of Jared, Jensen could see the back of a very short man walking with purpose towards the assembled chairs.

"Son of a bitch," he growled, and put on an extra burst of speed.

Jared was practically on top of Zangara by the time Jensen caught up to him; he seized Jared by the back of his jacket and hauled, hard. "Wait, damn you!"

Jared's forward momentum stopped abruptly, and they nearly ended up in a pile on the floor when Jensen overcompensated for Jared's weight.

Jared whirled on him, colour high. "The hell are you doing?" he demanded. "That was him!"

"I know!" Jensen shot back. "What did I say about following my lead, asshole?"

"I almost had him! We could have stopped the whole thing from even happening! Why did you stop me?"

"Because that's the last thing I want!" Jensen snapped, in a furious undertone.

 _That_ caught Jared off guard. "What? Why the hell not?"

"That's-" Jensen cut himself off, belatedly remembering where they were. "We can't talk here. Come on." He grabbed Jared's wrist without bothering to ask for permission, and started dragging him back through the crowd. The eyes followed, avidly curious. Jensen ignored them.

"What about Zangara?" Jared asked, not quite resisting, but not making it easy for Jensen either. Thank god he wasn't too big for Jensen to force the matter; this would have been a lot harder if Jared'd had the muscles to go with his broad frame.

"We'll catch up to him at the speech. Trust me, I don't want to have to do any of this again."

Jared's ensuing silence sounded skeptical in the extreme, but he still let Jensen pull him down the street and into the first quiet alleyway he came to.

"Care to explain now?" Jared asked, arms crossed over his chest like he was a five year old having a temper tantrum. "Because I thought we were supposed to be saving this other Roosevelt."

Jensen very carefully did not sigh. He doubted Jared would take it well. Also, he remembered having a very similar conversation with Jeff, once upon a time. At least it had happened now, when he had enough time to run damage control, rather than when the assassination attempt happened.

"Our job is to put time back on the right course, not to mess it up even further," Jensen told him. "If you had stopped Zangara from ever reaching the rally, that would have had unintended consequences."

"Yeah, like stopping five people from getting shot. I'm not really hearing the downside to that."

"Because it's changing history," Jensen reminded him, with as much patience as he could muster. "Which, if you'll recall, is the exact opposite of what my job's supposed to be."

Jared scowled. "So you think that the mayor of Chicago - what was his name, Cermak - getting killed by this lunatic is okay?"

Jensen bit back his own instinctive retort. "I think it's not up to me. I'm telling you that this is the way it happened in linear time. Zangara missed, Cermak died and FDR got a popularity boost that helped him to be a president who literally changed the world. That's history. Cermak could have gone on to find the cure to cancer _and_ ended world hunger if he'd lived and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference because that's _not what happened_."

"So," Jared said, with a sort of precarious calm that had Jensen immediately wary. "We're here to make sure that Zangara takes the shot, misses and kills Cermak instead, and then gets the electric chair for his crimes."

Jensen nodded.

"What the fuck, Jensen." Jared sounded disgusted by the very idea. "I can't believe this is what you've roped me into."

Jensen huffed, stung and trying not to show it. "You're the one who said you wanted to help. Feel free to fuck off if you've changed your mind." 

"I didn't think I was helping you to-" Jared seemed to become belatedly aware of the fact that they were still nominally in public, and his next words were hissed out under his breath. "Murder someone!"

"Don't blame me for something that history did." Jensen pinned Jared with a stern look. "My job is to put the world back in order. And that means making sure that things happen the way they did the first time. Even if it means that someone dies."

"Why can't we just save them?" Jared demanded, dangerously close to pleading. 

Jensen took a deep, steadying breath. "Look, Jared. I get it. I do. But there's more at stake here than Roosevelt's life. His immediate care and concern for Cermak was front page news all over America. This was FDR's first trial under fire as the future president, and it set the stage for his time in office. People _believed_ in him thanks to the way he helped Cermak and the other victims, which made it much easier for him to push through his policies. If not for this event, the New Deal might have been delayed or not gone through at all, and then where would America be?"

Jared's glare was cold. "Is this why you read all that stuff before? So you knew who was okay collateral damage?"

"This is the way it has to be, and I'm sorry if you don't like it." Jensen pinned him with a forbidding look of his own. "But thinking that you have the right to decide what should happen makes you the same as the revisionists and, honestly, I don't have time for this right now. It's not up to me or you or anyone else to decide it's okay to mess with history."

The cold disapproval on Jared's face didn't change.

Jensen pushed a frustrated hand through his hair, nearly losing his hair in the process. "Just… go wait back with Kaz, okay? I'll get this done and then bring you back to your time." He turned to leave the alleyway, shoulders consciously straight.

"And you're seriously okay with getting a man killed today," Jared called after him, and something inside Jensen twinged at the righteous indignation in those words.

He threw a bitter look over his shoulder. "I'll thank you to stop blaming me for someone else's crimes. This isn't my time, or my place, but it's still my responsibility to make sure that things happen the way they did the first time around. If you want to villainize me for that, you go right the hell ahead. I'm just doing my job."

With that, he turned and strode away with his head held high, ignoring the hollow ache of disappointment in his chest.

Jared watched him go.

In the wake of their argument, Jensen took a handful of minutes to pull himself together, then squared his shoulders and set off to do his damn job.

Night was falling fast as Jensen found himself a good vantage point on the edge of the crowd. He kept a weather eye on Zangara, fidgeting in the third row, while he observed the rally as a whole. Someone had helped Zangara change his fate, and they were almost certainly here, somewhere. If only Jensen could find them before it was too late.

A pair of footsteps stopped right behind him, and Jensen stilled.

"Jensen," Jared's voice said, and Jensen let out an explosive breath.

"The hell are you doing here?" he demanded, rounding on a very sheepish-looking Jared. "You're supposed to be waiting with Kaz!"

"Yeah, I, um." Jared bit his lip. "I'm sorry, okay? I was out of line, and I apologize."

Jensen blinked, taken aback. "Oh. Well, that's-"

"So I thought if you, y'know, still wanted my help, that maybe I could…" Jared trailed off hopefully.

Jensen looked at him. "Can I trust you?"

"Ye-"

"I mean it," Jensen interrupted. "This is too important for you to be on the fence. If you say you're going to help. I need you all in." He caught Jared's eyes and held them. "Are _you_ okay knowing that our actions here are going to put history back on track, which involves casualties?"

Jared was silent for a long moment. "I am," he said, his determination clear despite the way his voice wobbled.

"Fine," Jensen allowed with a wave of his hand. "Welcome back on the team."

"Really? I mean, awesome, but I was expecting more of an argument than that."

"I don't have time for that right now. You want in, you're in."

"I won't let you down," Jared promised. "Now I've gotta ask because it's been killing me: why are you wearing glasses?"

"Hmm?" Funny, he'd almost forgotten about them. "Oh, there's a pair in your bag too. Put 'em on. It'll help."

"Are these spy glasses?" Jared asked, sounding absolutely delighted. He fumbled to put them on, still talking like a hyperactive six year old. "Do they, like shoot lasers, or identify time travelers, or calculate trajectories or-" the glasses slid neatly onto his nose, and Jared blinked. "-or do they just make it easier to see in the dark."

"Night vision goggles stand out too much." Jensen tapped the arm of his own glasses. "These are classier."

"What now?" Jared asked, once he'd stopped playing with his glasses.

"Zengara's in the third row," Jensen said, nodding towards him. "Once the speech starts, we need to get in as close as we can to prevent anyone who might be trying to interfere with his first shot. The crowd will deal with him after that."

"This seems kind of like winging it," Jared said, sounding dubious.

Jensen shrugged. "That's what happens when you're trying to anticipate the future. You get used to it."

"Okay, but-"

A massive cheer rose up from the crowd, and Jensen craned his neck to see FDR's car approaching down the road, flanked by the secret service. 

"Show time," he muttered to himself, every sense on high alert.

"Seriously, though," Jared said earnestly, while they waited for the speech to begin. "I was way out of line. I was just caught off guard, y'know? I really didn't mean to, like, blame you for anything."

"Mmhmm," Jensen said absently. He scanned the crowd, a frown creasing his brow. Where the hell was that revisionist bastard?

"Are you even listening?" Jared demanded.

"Not really," Jensen said. A shift in the crowd gave him a sudden view of a nondescript man pushing his way through the crush of people _away_ from FDR's car. He moved with the single-minded focus of someone who knew exactly where he was going, and his route would intersect with Zangara's vantage point.

Bingo.

Jared was still talking about something.

"You head to Zangara's position," Jensen said, not daring to take his eyes off the guy he'd spotted. "I'll catch up." 

"But Jensen," Jared tried to protest.

"I trust you," was all Jensen said, before pushing his way through the crowd towards that moving figure.

Despite what a person might have thought, Jensen hadn't really come into direct contact with many revisionists in the past. Sure, he ran afoul of their handiwork often enough, and he was often cleaning up their messes, but the people themselves tended to be a lot more elusive. But time travelers could always recognize their own, and there was no doubt in Jensen's mind that the slight, scruffy man emerging out of the crowd in front of him was a revisionist.

"Oh," the revisionist said, when Jensen blocked his way. "It's you again. How unfortunate." 

Jensen had never seen this guy in his life. 

"Funny," he said, not bothering to be subtle about the way he was staying between the revisionist and Zangara's location. "But, somehow, I don't think we've been introduced." 

"Oh, you can call me Misha." 

Jensen blinked. "Uh, you sure you should have told me that?" 

Misha waved a careless hand. "It's fine." 

"If you say so," Jensen said dubiously. He paused for a beat to gain his bearings, then asked, "Does that mean you're planning to come quietly?"

"Not in the slightest," Misha said cheerfully. "And since I'm assuming that you're not going to get out of my way, we're left at something of an impasse."

Applause burst out on all sides, and Jensen fought to keep his bearings when the crowd pressed even closer. Misha shifted as if to leave, and Jensen grabbed him by the wrists in a burst of movement that surprised even him.

"My friends of Miami," Roosevelt's voice rang out in the still night air, as Jensen glared directly into Misha's mildly startled face. "I am not a stranger here. Because for a good many years I used to come down here. I haven't been here for seven years. But on coming down here, I have firmly resolved not to make it the last time."

"You can't hold onto me forever," Misha said, the words nearly lost under another surge of applause.

"I can hold you long enough," Jensen retorted, ignoring some person who shushed him.

Misha appeared to care even less about the approval of others, because he continued speaking regardless of the fact that Roosevelt was still talking. "You do realize that you're wrong to dictate the future."

Jensen's lip curled into a snarl. "I'm pretty sure I should be saying that to you."

Misha tsked sadly, like Jensen was a misguided child in need of direction. "That nebulous future that you're trying so hard to protect is the same one that caused your life to be such suffering. Why are you protecting a world that let your family do that to you?"

Jensen's body went cold, then hot. How could he possibly…?

"I would have thought that you, of all people, would see the value in a little bit of anarchy," Misha continued, apparently unbothered by Jensen's tight grip or the rally going on around him. There was something deep and dark in his eyes as he added, "Just because it's the way it's always been done, that doesn't make it right."

And Jensen didn't have a clue how to respond, so he settled for glaring Misha down while Roosevelt continued to talk. Misha, damn him, endured everything with that same mild calm, only stirring when Roosevelt started wrapping up his speech.

"It's nearly time," he murmured.

"You're not going to succeed," Jensen growled.

Misha appeared unbothered. "Oh, I don't know about that. You see, I know something that you don't."

A prickle of unease slithered down Jensen's spine. "Really?" he asked, firming his grip on Misha's wrists. "Care to share with the class?"

"I'm afraid that your excellent efforts to restrain me were something of a waste of effort. You see," he said, lowering his voice even as the applause started up again, so that Jensen had to lean in closer to hear. "I switched out Zangara's chair for a level one."

A sudden swift knee to the groin had Jensen doubling over in shock, and he swore weakly when he felt Misha wrench his arms free. He ignored the tears streaming from his eyes and forced himself upright, whirling around to give chase.

The revisionist was nowhere to be seen. 

"God dammit," Jensen swore. If he fucked this up now, he'd never forgive himself. He started shoving his way through the crowd, trying frantically to get back to Zangara's position. He had to get there before-

A gunshot exploded through the air. People started shrieking, and Jensen nearly got crushed by the suddenly surging crowd. The gun went off again, four shots in rapid succession.

A searing pain exploded through Jensen's arm, and he staggered, feeling suddenly boneless. Hands caught at his shoulders, fighting to keep him upright even as his knees buckled. He looked down. His left sleeve was drenched with blood, almost black against the fabric. Someone nearby breathed out a horrified curse.

"God dammit," Jensen said again, with feeling. And then he passed out.

Jensen woke up in the hospital. Which was just  _perfect_.

"Jensen?" Jared's face swam into focus, almost disconcertingly close. It was a strangely relieving sight. "Oh my God, thank God you're awake. How do you feel?"

"Ngh," Jensen managed. His arm felt like it had been dipped in molten lava, which at least meant that it was still there. A glance down revealed that his sleeve had been cut away and someone had slapped a rudimentary dressing on it, so at least he wasn't bleeding all over the floor anymore. 

That didn't resolve the most pressing issue, though.

"Zangara," he slurred, swallowing back the nausea. "What happened? Is the president-"

"Safe," Jared said, sounding pleased with himself. "And the secret service arrested Zangara." He sobered slightly, mouth turning down at the corners. "He still hit the mayor and a couple of other people." _You included_ , he didn't say aloud, although it clearly went without saying. 

"Good," Jensen said, and was too tired to roll his eyes when Jared had the nerve to look upset at that. "It's history, Jared, that's how it's supposed to happen."

"So you were destined to get shot, is that what you're saying?"

"I'm saying that it doesn't matter if I get hit, but it's worth it to get things back on track. A flesh wound is nothing." He hefted his arm, and promptly regretted it when it made pain spike through his veins. More blood seeped through the already stained bandage. "Shit."

"The doctor will be back soon," Jared promised. Jensen noticed that he was looking a little green around the gills. 

"Awesome," Jensen said. "Let's get out of here before that happens." 

"Wait, but... what? You were shot! You need to be in the hospital." 

"No, I need to get back to Kaz so I can fix myself. Help me up." Jensen heaved himself labouriously upright, gritting his teeth at the way the motion made pain ricochet through his skull. "Come on, Jared!"

Jared didn't move. "But, why?"

Jensen did not have the patience for this right now. "Because the last thing I need is to get a hatchet job surgery from some doctor in the back end of history. _Especially_ when I have a state of the art medical centre back on Kaz that will fix me up in a fraction of the time."

"I guess that makes sense," Jared said dubiously.

"Also, didn't it occur to you to wonder how I'm supposed to check into a hospital nearly 100 years before I was born? It's not like I can give them my health card."

Jared still looked ready to protest. "But-"

"Jared, if you don't think that I'm willing to jump out of that window if I have to, you are gravely mistaken."

"Why am I not surprised that you're the worst patient in the world?" Jared asked, a wry sort of smile flickering about his mouth. "Come on then, Rambo."

Jensen grunted when Jared hauled him out of the bed and looped an arm around his waist. He put his good arm over Jared's shoulders, and tried to hold his other as still as possible as they sneaked down the hallway and out of the hospital. 

"So?" Jensen asked, when he couldn't bear the wait any longer. "How did you do it?"

 "Hmm?" Jared glanced over at him. "Do what?"

Jensen huffed at him. "How did you stop Zangara?"

A smile burst across Jared's face. "I kicked the chair while he was trying to line up his shot. Think that'll count as a wobble?"

It hurt like hell when Jensen burst out laughing, but he couldn't help himself. "Perfect," he snickered, once he'd calmed down some. "Good work. And… thanks."

Jared ducked his head to hide his blush, but not fast enough to keep Jensen from seeing it. It made him want to blush too, for some reason, a strangely light feeling buoying up his tired body and making him feel happier, somehow.

A too-long walk back to Kaz, some medical attention and ten solid hours of sleep later, Jensen found himself revisiting that strange sort of contentment. It hadn't gone away, which was the weird part; the intensity had eased, and now it felt more like an extra heartbeat under his skin, fluttering to life when Jared smiled at him over the remains of their breakfast. 

The jury was still out on whether or not it was wonderful or terrifying.

"So," Jared said, once he'd finished trying to get Jensen out of house and home. "Everything's fixed now? We've preserved the sanctity of the time stream or whatever?"

Jensen nodded. "Kaz has been monitoring it. Everything looks good."

Jared chuckled. "I gotta say, saving the world isn't something that I expected to be doing on my spring break."

Jensen cracked a smile of his own. "Better than getting drunk on the beach?"

"Way better. Although I think I agree with you that it's better when it's not exciting." His eyes were somber as he looked across the table at Jensen. "I was really worried about you, Jensen."

Warmth pulsed through Jensen's veins. "Kaz'd still have got you home, you know," he said, waving off the comment. "You wouldn't have been stuck in 1933 forever."

"Not really what I was worrying about, if I'm honest." Jared laughed, the sound unexpectedly rueful. "Is it bad of me not to want to go back? To my own time," he added, as Jensen's eyes went wide. "I just had this amazing adventure, and now I'm just going to go back to my normal boring life like nothing happened. It's gonna be even harder to focus on my midterms now."

"You don't have to go back," was out of Jensen's mouth before he'd realized that he was even going to speak.  

Jared blinked at him, shocked speechless, and Jensen was absolutely appalled to feel himself blushing.

"I mean, not right now," he added hurriedly. "You could… stay. For a while."

Jared stared at him. Jensen fought against the urge to fidget.

"I'm not sure hanging around during the Great Depression is going to be fun for long once the novelty wears off," Jared said slowly. "Unless you mean that you'd be willing to take me with you. Through time, I mean."

Jensen shrugged. "I wouldn't mind the company," he said, as though that wasn't the understatement of the century. His pulse was pounding in his ears. "Think of it like an extra long spring break."

"I... geez, I dunno. For how long?"

He was thinking about it. Jensen tried to keep the eagerness off his face.

"Not much more than a month or two, I'd say, or you'll have a bitch of a time remembering the information you need for those midterms of yours. We can see a lot of history in a couple months."

Probably better for Jensen to have a finite end in close sight, as well. Because Jared had a life and friends and a family that would miss him if he never came back, and so he couldn't be something that Jensen wanted to keep.

But he could have a friend for now, which would have to be good enough.

Jared chewed his lower lip. "How much time will I miss?"

Jensen had to laugh at that. "None whatsoever. Kaz can have you back within seconds of the time we left. As long as you don't do something drastic while we're gone, like get a face tattoo or something, no one will ever know you were gone."

"Wow," Jared said. He was silent for a long moment.

Jensen held his breath.

"What the hell," Jared decided, with that signature dimpled grin of his. "How many opportunities am I going to get to travel through time? Let's do this."

Jensen couldn't have kept from grinning if his life depended on it. "Welcome to the team."

"Thanks for having me."

They smiled at each other like idiots for a few moments longer, before Jensen cleared his throat and turned away. "If you're staying, you should probably get Kaz to make you some coveralls that fit. A single outfit's not going to last you long."

Jared nodded. "Mind if I have a shower as well?" A self-conscious smile crossed his face. "I'm kind of gross right now."

"Shower and closet are through there," he said, pointing. He glanced down at the mess of breakfast dishes. "I'll clean this up."

"Thanks."

Jensen waved him off. "It's nothing." 

"No," Jared surprised him by saying. "I mean, thanks for… for trusting me. And for letting me stay."

"Thanks for being trustworthy," Jensen managed, because what the hell else was he supposed to say? "Glad to have you along."

Jared smiled again, then turned and headed into the bathroom.

Jensen dithered around clearing dishes until the shower started up, then he called dispatch.

"Hey there, hot stuff," Felicia said warmly. She smiled at him over the screen. "Don't hear from you often."

Jensen smiled at her. "That's because I feel so despondent when I have to hang up on you, Felicia."

"Flatterer. Enough of your sweet nothings. What can I do for you?"

Jensen took a deep breath. "I ran into a revisionist on my last job."

Haltingly, he told her about the encounter with Misha, listening to the tap of keys as Felicia entered the information into her computer. He stumbled a bit over the part where Misha seemed to know his past; Felicia waited patiently while he forced the words out.

"Okay," she said, when was done. "I'll put a trace through the system, see if we get any hits from the name or the M.O. Did you get a time cast?"

It hadn't even occurred to him. 

"Not to worry," Felicia said, obviously reading the answer on his face. "We'll do it the old-fashioned way. I'll keep you posted. Anything else to report?" 

The shower chose that moment to shut off, and Jensen thought of Jared, dripping and towel-wrapped, and of the nervous twitches of excitement that kept bubbling up inside of him. "No," he said finally. "Nothing else. Thanks for the help, Felicia."

She winked at him. "Any time. Later, sweet cheeks!"

Jensen stared at the blank monitor for a long moment.

An unusually subdued chime from Kaz asked him if he knew what he was doing.

Jensen had to shake his head at that. "Not even a little bit. It's not going to stop me, though."

Jared, at least, was super gung-ho about the current state of affairs.

"So?" he asked, as soon as he reappeared from the bathroom, freshly scrubbed and wearing a pair of company coveralls. "Where are we going first?"

Jensen, who'd already been briefed on their next job, offered Jared a grin. "How'd you like to experience the World War II home front?"

"As long as I don't wind up drafted, I am all for it!"

"I'll agree to those terms." Jensen waved at the passenger seat. "Sit down then."

They melted through time, reforming on a busy street in New York. As soon as Kaz touched down, Jared's eyes went wide, and he clamped a hand to his temple. 

"Oh shit, I totally know who FDR is." He shook his head, and only Jensen's seatbelt kept him from leaping forward to grab him, just in case. "Wow. That was a serious head rush. The hell just happened?" 

"That's your brain resetting your memories to reflect the change in your personal timeline" Jensen told him. "It's disorienting, but it'll pass in a minute."

"That's an understatement." Jared laughed, a little disbelievingly. "Shit, how did I forget about Franklin Roosevelt? That's practically un-American. I mean, it's _FDR_."

Jensen shrugged. "When you got hit by the ripple, you became part of the timeline where he died before ever officially becoming president. Now that we've prevented that future from occurring, your memories have returned to their original state."

"Okay," Jared said, chewing thoughtfully on his lower lip. "But why didn't I know before? Shouldn't I have got all my memories back the second that I knocked that chair off balance?"

"That's not the way time works for us. Chrono Techs experience time a little less linearly than other people, and we usually have to step entirely out of a time period before the changes we made rebound against us. And sometimes, if something's not that important, it can require a specific trigger to activate those new memories." Jensen chuckled. "One time, I spent three years thinking that the Cubs were the most successful team in MLB history." 

"The horror," Jared intoned. "So, why are we here?"

Jensen pointed out the window towards the harbor. "One of those ships is going to be sunk by the German blockade. There's a family that we need to make sure doesn't get on it."

And that's how it began.

Traveling with Jared was nothing like travelling with Jeff.

First of all, this time it was Jensen who was the expert. Jared was enthusiastic, but had next to no idea how not to get himself killed in any number of messy and temporally problematic ways, which meant a lot of coaching and Jensen passing on the lessons he'd learned at Jeff's side. Jensen wasn't used to being an expert in anything, and especially not with such a keen student. Jared was full of questions, and soaked up information like a sponge.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd talked so much. He had a sneaking suspicion that it might be never.

In the first three weeks of Jared's stay, they nearly got themselves executed as turncoats in the Civil War, listened to Martin Luther King speak at a rally, and helped with the rescue efforts on 9/11. Jared rose to every challenge like a champion, exceeding Jensen's expectations with startling regularity. By the time they joined a group of pioneers making the long and dangerous trek across the Sierra Nevada to California, Jared was practically independent, working with Jensen rather than simply following his instructions. Jensen had apprenticed with Jeff for years before he'd reached Jared's level of comfort with the job. It was a little infuriating, honestly.

Even Kaz was warming up to him, even though Jared still couldn't understand a word Kaz said. Jensen suspected that Jared taking care of Jensen after he'd been shot by Zangara had gone a long way towards thawing Kaz's instinctive distrust. 

All told, Jensen reached the end of Jared's first month feeling that Jared wasn't so much an apprentice as a partner. A partner that Jensen could trust, who was nearly his equal. It was somewhat addicting. Jensen liked having a partner. Which was going to suck when Jared left.

It was maybe a problem.

The other, bigger, problem was that Jensen's crush on Jared was starting to get out of control.

It didn't help that Jared was hot like burning. Not that Jeff hadn't been a good looking guy, because he definitely had. But Jensen had been too busy reeling over the complete implosion of his life to really pay that much attention. And okay, he'd maybe had a little crush on Jeff, but give him a break. He'd been frigging 15 and Jeff had quite literally swept in out of nowhere to rescue him. Jensen defied anyone to live through that without a healthy dose of hero worship slash embarrassing teenage pining.

It had never been anything more than a crush, though. And, if the weird floaty feeling he got every time he locked eyes with Jared was any indication, this was a whole hell of a lot more than a crush.

Also, Jared was definitely way too young for him. Hell, even if Jensen was only as old as he looked, the age gap was still pretty scandalous by modern - well, Jensen's version of modern - standards.

("Kaz, am I a dirty old man?"

Kaz's answering tone was rather more gleeful than Jensen really appreciated.

"Well fuck you too. And no, he is not crushing back, you're imagining things.")

Honestly, the whole situation was a recipe for disaster. If Jensen had any sense, he'd have taken Jared home as soon as he'd realized just what kind of clusterfuck he was letting himself in for.

Unfortunately, Jensen had never been all that good at being sensible.

"So, what's the emergency this time?" Jared asked, with a cheeky sort of grin. A month of constant companionship had rubbed out even the semblance of respect for Jensen and his career. "Cavemen take a wrong turn at Albuquerque? Communist invasion during the Red Scare?" 

"Hmm? No emergency," Jensen said. "Just some general maintenance." 

Jared raised an eyebrow. "How exactly does one do general maintenance on time? Got some metaphysical pipes to tighten?" 

"You know, for someone who wanted to come, you're certainly doing a bang up job of getting yourself booted back to 2004."

"I'm getting the impression that you need to lighten up." 

Which wasn't anything Jensen hadn't heard before. Jeff had always said he was too serious. 

He vaguely remembered hearing the same in his pre-Jeff life as well, but he tried not to think about that.

So he simply shrugged. "Better men than you have tried." 

"Now that sounded like a challenge," Jared said. "And one that I will gladly accept." 

"Oh goody. Well, while you're busy making devious schemes, you may as well help with my actual job as well, you fucking freeloader."

"Sure," Jared said agreeably. "As soon as you explain how one even does maintenance on the time stream, if there aren't any metaphysical pipes included."

Kaz chimed out a request for the two of them to stop bickering like an old married couple. Jensen gave the room the finger, and Kaz laughed at him.

"I'm surrounded by traitors," he said mournfully. 

Jared draped an arm around his shoulders. "Aw, we torment because we care, Jensen."

Kaz took this opportunity to point out - yet again - that Jared's crush on him was almost as embarrassing obvious as Jensen's was. Jensen wanted a new time machine.

"Ahem," Jensen said, ignoring him. "What we're doing is checking to make sure that history's unfolding the way it's supposed to."

"You know, I've been wondering about that," Jared said. "Who gets to decide what history is 'supposed' to do?"

Jensen shrugged. "The management."

"Ah yes, the mysterious management. Don't think I haven't noticed that you never talk about them, by the way."

"They're…" Jensen paused, considering. "Hard to describe. They're from really fucking far in the future. A lot of the way we perceive the world doesn't really apply to them."

Jared huffed. "But you still trust them not to be screwing you over?"

"What do you mean?"

Jared threw himself onto the couch with a huff. "What if they're, I dunno, changing stuff? Like, telling you they're keeping things the way they're supposed to be but actually making you change history to suit them?"

Jensen thought about the management doing that and had to bite back a smile. "Ah, no, they're not doing that."

"But how do you _know_?"

"Let's just say that, by the time someone manages to invent a reusable, sustainable time machine, humankind has evolved to a point where altruism is a lot easier. Besides," he added, "As people get more time sensitive, they're more likely to notice the difference if something changes. It would be hard for the management to be making changes to history when all their staff would be able to tell that something was wrong. My…" he faltered, groping for a word that could describe Jeff and coming up short, "former partner could tell when someone was at risk of taking an alternate path just by talking to them." 

"Really? Can you do that?" 

Jensen shook his head. "I haven't been doing this job for long enough yet to gain that kind of temporal sensitivity. Only the real experts are that aware." 

"Speaking of which," Jared said, in a casual tone that was anything but. "How long have you been doing this job?" 

"Mm, 50 years or so? I don't really keep track anymore." He glanced up and frowned at the blank shock on Jared's face. "What?" 

"50 years!" Jared squeaked. "But that's - how?" 

Jensen blinked, confused. "What?"

Jared flailed at him.

"That doesn't help, you do realize." 

"You don't look like you've been doing this job for more than 10 years, let alone 50!" Jared burst out, and Jensen remembered abruptly that Jared was a temporal. Something sour gathered in the pit of his stomach at the reminder.

"Oh, right. It's this job, actually. Jumping around through time means that the years weigh on Chrono Techs a little differently than temporals. Also people in the future live longer and I've got full access to their health coverage." 

Jared didn't seem to know what to do with this information. "Then… how old are you?"

"Mid to late 60s, probably," Jensen said, which was mostly a guess, but accurate enough for the situation. Jared's eyes nearly bugged out of his head, and Jensen rubbed a self-conscious hand across the back of his neck. "It's no big deal, really." 

Jared rolled his eyes so hard that Jensen was impressed they didn't just fall out. "No big deal, he says. Kaz," Jared said, in a longsuffering tone. "Can you explain to Jensen why it might be kind of surprising that he's probably a similar age to my grandfather?"

Kaz was clearly warming up to Jared, because he actually did so. Of course, he also added that it was emotionally damaging to Jared because Jared had a crush on Jensen the size of a small country, which Jensen found _highly_ unhelpful, but that was typical Kaz. Personally, Jensen thought that Kaz was enjoying having someone around who couldn't understand him, because it meant that he could say things that made Jensen blush, and Jared had no idea what was going on.

Case in point.

"You okay?" Jared asked, while Jensen tried to will the pink out of his cheeks by sheer force of will.

Jensen coughed, waving off Jared's concern. "Fine. I just forget sometimes that my life isn't really normal by most people's standards. Sorry."

"It's fine," Jared said, proving himself once again to be the kind of guy who never took anything personally. He offered Jensen a crooked grin. "I mean, you're practically a senior citizen, so it's no surprise that your mind's going."

"Hey," Jensen said, stung. "I'm not that old! Time just-"

"Works differently for you, I heard." Jared squinted at him. "32, I think."

Jensen blinked at him. "What?"

"That's how old you look."

"That's an awfully precise number," was all Jensen could think to say.

"I believe in precision. So," Jared hooked both arms over the back of the couch, looking like he was settling in for the long term. "You look about half your actual age. Is that how it works? You age at half the speed of normal people?"

Jensen shook his head. "The earlier years tend to go faster, so it'll start slowing down soon. Jeff still hasn't aged out of the salt and pepper stage, and he's old enough to have come over on the Mayflower."

"Jeff? That your former partner?"

"Yeah," Jensen said, not sure why he felt awkward admitting it. 

Jared offered no clues; he seemed completely at ease with the whole conversation. "What about your family? Are they unnaturally young for their ages too?"

Jensen stilled. "I haven't got a family," he managed.

"What do you mean?" Jared asked, because he had all the emotional sensitivity of a bull in a china shop, sometimes. "Everyone has a family. You must have one."

"Must I?" Jensen demanded sharply. "I haven't had a family since long before I became a Chrono Tech. But to answer your question more generally, most Chrono Techs are either orphans or estranged from their families. Temporals and Chrono Techs don't mix well."

Jared's ruthless cheer faltered. "Jensen, I-"

Jensen was so ready to be done with this conversation. "Can we get to work now?"

Jared bit his lip. "Of course," he said finally. "So we're going to do general maintenance. How's that work?"

"There are places in history where the time stream gets… stretched thin. Usually places with a lot of lives intersecting in unexpected ways where there's a lot of opportunity for things to go kind of sideways. Our job is to make sure that everything's working properly. Make sense?"

"I think so. Where are we?"

"Ellis Island. Over 12 million immigrants entered America through the inspection station there, which makes it a prime spot for things to go wrong. So many lives, from all over the world, intersecting all at once; that's the sort of thing that can change history."

A thoughtful look crossed Jared's face. "You know, my grandparents came through Ellis Island when they immigrated to America. Do you think we-"

"No."

"Aw, but-"

"No, I am not going to let you bump into your grandparents. Knowing you, you're likely to write your fool self out of history, _again_."

Time continued to pass, far faster than Jensen really appreciated. And each day made it harder to remember what it had been like when he didn't have Jared constantly in his space. Jensen was probably in trouble.

"How'd you end up doing this?" Jared asked one day, while Jensen was doing some basic systems checks on Kaz. Jared was idly tossing a tennis ball up in the air, and Jensen was trying and failing not to be distracted by the flex and bunch of the muscles in his arms. "Did you, like, go to school for time continuum repair?" 

The thought made Jensen snort. "Hardly. I never even finished high school."

"Really?" Jared sat up a little straighter. "Why not?"

"It's a long story," Jensen evaded, but Jared was apparently not to be deterred.

"You got anything better to do? You said yourself that you could do systems checks in your sleep in Russian."

Some day, Jensen was going to figure out why he had so much trouble saying no to this kid. Clearly he'd been more starved for company than he'd realized, if he was even willing to think about telling Jared the truth.

"It's not a great adventure," Jensen tried. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to hear about something more interesting? Like the time I became a pirate?"

"No, you've got me curious now, although we'll definitely have to talk later about you being a pirate."

Jensen huffed out a sigh. "You really want to know?"

Jared stopped playing with his tennis ball and gave Jensen the benefit of his full attention. "I do."  

Kaz chimed worriedly at him, but Jensen waved him off. "It's fine, Kaz."

"If you don't want to-" Jared started, a belated realization that he'd stepped on a landmine spreading across his face.

"It's fine," Jensen repeated. He sat back on his heels, every ounce of his concentration focused on keeping his voice calm, level. 

"I figured out I was gay when I fell in love with my tenth grade English teacher," he started, because that was the easy part.

It also made Jared light up like a Christmas tree, which Jensen hadn't been expecting. "You're gay?" he demanded, then promptly flushed red.

Kaz trilled gleefully about Jared's crush again. Jensen ignored him.

"I am," he said, almost calmly. He arched an eyebrow, just to see if it would make Jared's blush darken. It did. "Is that okay?"

"Yes!" Jared blurted, then bit his lip and visibly schooled his expression. "Sorry, that's- that was rude. It's just, I er, I wasn't really expecting the story to start with… that."

Jensen offered him a humourless smirk. "Don't worry, it'll make sense in a second. Mostly because, when I told my parents they disowned me."

Jared sucked in a sharp breath. "Oh, _Jensen_ , no."  
   
Jensen shrugged with poorly faked nonchalance. "Like I said, it was a long time ago. But they turned me out with nothing but my schoolbag and the clothes on my back, which is a pretty hard situation for a teenager."

"Christ."

"I had nowhere to go," Jensen said, cursing internally when he heard his voice crack. For fuck's sake, it had been half a century ago. It shouldn't still be affecting him. "I'm from Texas. And yeah, the world was a more tolerant place when I was growing up than it was in your time, but some things take longer. I was… an awkward kid. And I didn't have anyone who'd take me in."

Jared edged closer, hands clasped under his chin. "What did you do?"

"What could I do? I started hitchhiking. Figured if I could get to a bigger city, then maybe I'd be able, I dunno, find work or something." He shook his head. "As if anyone would give a job to a homeless gay teenager. The hitching didn't go well either," he continued, almost casually. "I ended up at a truck stop in the middle of goddamn nowhere, half-starved and sure I was going to die and no one-" he swallowed hard, "-and no one was even going to miss me."

A touch on his hand jolted Jensen back to himself, and he blinked wet eyes at the sight of Jared's hand covering his own, his big fingers warm and infinitely comforting.

"I doubt that very much," Jared said, infinitely soft. "Because I've only known you for a little while, and I know that I'm going to miss you like hell when you finally kick me back to my time. I'm certain you were missed."

Jensen sucked in a shuddering breath. "Thanks," he managed. 

"So then what happened? At the truck stop?"

He shrugged. "Jeff came by in Kaz and offered me a job."

"And you went with him?" Jared demanded, incredulous. "Are you insane?" 

"Everyone's an idiot when they're 15," Jensen said. It was getting easier to talk now that the worst of it was over. "And I was pretty sure I was going to starve to death on the side of the road because no one cared enough to come looking for me, so it didn't seem like that much worse a fate. 

"Jesus. You ever see your family after?" 

Jensen made a face. "God no. They wanted me gone; I got fucking gone." He tried to smile, and decided he was too wrung out to be embarrassed at the way it came out watery and thin. "Their loss, right?"

He was enveloped in a hug before he'd quite realized what was happening, Jared's grip hard enough to make him squeak.

"Absolutely their loss," Jared whispered fiercely, and Jensen gave in to the clawing urge to hug Jared back, burying his face in Jared's shoulder as his shoulders shuddered with empty tears.

The rest of the day was pretty much a write-off. Jensen sobbed until he couldn't sob anymore, and afterwards, the two of them laying tangled together on the floor, simply inhaling each other's presence. Jared told him whispered secrets about his own life, and Jensen found himself responding with stories about his family that he'd all but forgotten, about his little sister and his big brother and his mom's apple pie and the puppy he'd got for his fifth birthday.

Jared held him close through all of it, a solid rock in the middle of a turbulent sea that Jensen had been holding back by sheer force of will all these years. Eventually, they migrated to the couch and watched some mindless action movie with a bowl of popcorn between them. Jensen said little, emotionally wrung out and so damn grateful for the reassuring weight of Jared's arm across his shoulders that he thought he might spontaneously combust with the force of it. 

"Hey," Jared murmured, when the movie was over and the silence of the room was comforting and intimate. "Feel better?"

Jensen managed a nod, some still-awake part of his brain profoundly embarrassed that Jared was the strong one, when he was scarcely a third of Jensen's age. The rest of him was just tired, though, and was happy to take the comfort Jared offered. "Thanks," he mumbled, and stilled when Jared pressed a chaste kiss to his forehead. 

"Any time," Jared said. "Thank you for telling me."

Later, in the darkness of his bedroom, Jensen thought about his family, and about Jared, and about that kiss. 

"That was the first time I've ever told anyone that story," he admitted to Kaz, hushed to keep from waking Jared. "Even Jeff never heard all of it."

Kaz murmured a soothing tone.

"Why did I tell him?" Jensen asked, bewildered. "I didn't have to."

If Kaz knew, he had no answer for Jensen. But the steady warmth inside him, that only seemed to grow bigger as the days passed, told him that he already knew.

So Jensen was probably in love.

"Should I do something about this?" he asked Kaz, in a rare moment while Jared was preoccupied with not forgetting everything he'd ever learned about engineering. "I mean, he's not staying forever, so it's probably better not to say anything, right?"

Kaz disagreed. Quite emphatically.

Jensen frowned. "Is it better, though? Won't it just make it harder to see him go if I, if we…"

Kaz pointed out that he was going to be miserable no matter what if Jared left, so he might as well grab as much happiness for himself as he could in the meantime.

Which was true enough, Jensen supposed, but, "What do you mean 'if'?"

Kaz hummed wordlessly, practically radiating amusement, and Jensen gave up on the whole conversation.

The thought lingered though, especially since he and Jared seemed to be more attuned to each other than ever after Jensen's meltdown. Jensen found himself seeking out Jared all the time, for no reason other than to look at him. Once or twice, he caught Jared doing the same to him. Jared touched him more too.

Jared was going to beat him to it, Kaz warned him one day, and Jensen had to admit that he was probably right. They couldn't go on like this.

So when his next scheduled day off arrived, Jensen decided that he would test the waters, as it were. 

He dithered about for a while, trying to decide where they should go. He considered his lonely little apartment in the future for all of ten seconds, before deciding that no one needed to be subjected to that. Besides, he had all of American history at his disposal; there had to be somewhere that was appropriate for a maybe-date.

It took him a couple hours of brainstorming - and some timely help from Kaz - before he settled on an idea. 

Jared never asked where they were going before they went, Jensen had noticed. He seemed to enjoy being surprised, as far as Jensen could tell. It made very little sense to Jensen, who always needed to know exactly where he was and why, but it made it easy to program the appropriate date into the computer and get them there with Jared none the wiser.

They'd hardly touched down before Jared was bounding out of his chair and dashing off to grab his kit.

Jensen huffed out a little laugh. "Someone's excited," he observed, following at a much more leisurely pace. 

Jared's answering grin was infectious. "I've got a good feeling about this one." He held out his arm, fingers of the opposite hand lingering over the activation key on his TAC. "Who's going first?"

Jensen waved a hand. "Knock yourself out."

Jared activated his TAC with an entirely unnecessary flourish, and looked down. His delighted laugh as he looked down at himself made Jensen struggle to bite back a smile. 

"Bell bottoms?" Jared exclaimed, twisting to get a better look at his ensemble. "And an honest to God fringed vest. Oh my god, this is fantastic." 

"You should see the feathered headband you're wearing," Jensen suggested. "For once, your hair looks like a deliberate choice, rather than the revenge of a grumpy hairdresser." 

"You next," Jared insisted, ignoring the insult entirely. 

Jensen had been here often enough to feel pretty confident about what he'd be wearing; he activated his TAC and was prepared for the look of devious glee on Jared's face. "What?" he asked innocently. "You don't like tie dye?" 

"How does that look good?" Jared asked, almost rhetorically. "Tie dye's ridiculous. It shouldn't look good."

Jensen calmly straightened the tails on the bandanna tied around his forehead. "You wish you looked this good."

"This is officially my favourite dress up location ever," Jared said. He was still grinning, and didn't look like he was likely to stop any time soon. "Okay, I have to know. When and where are we?"

"1969," Jensen answered. "You should be able to figure out the where on your own."

Jared pouted. "You know history's never been my strong suit. Can you give me a hint?" 

"Like you haven't already had some." 

"Jensen, please?" 

Jensen was going to have to do something about all the damn smiling he did around Jared. It was starting to get ridiculous. "Well, we're on a dairy farm."

Jared stared at him. "You're not serious."

"Oh, but I am. Hmm, what else? It's August, so I hope you're ready to be too hot. We're in New York State. There are about 400,00 people here, give or take. There are a lot of hippies involved." He raised an eyebrow at Jared, who looked no more enlightened. "Do you seriously not know?"

"You're the worst, you know that?" Jared shamelessly broke out the puppy dog eyes. "Give me a better clue."

"Oh fine." He paused for a moment, collecting the lyrics in his head, and then started to sing:

"We are stardust, we are golden,  
And we've got to get ourselves  
Back to the garden.  
By the time we got to Woodstock,   
We were half a million str-"

"Woodstock?" Jared interrupted, a delighted grin spreading across his face. " _The_ Woodstock?" 

"You know another one?" Jensen asked, with a faux innocence that made Jared glare at him for a whole five seconds before his smile broke through again. 

"God, my mom would be so jealous if she knew I was here." Jared shook himself free of the thought. "Is this another one of those time elbows?" 

Jensen was nonplussed. "What?" 

"Y'know." Jared made an obscure and profoundly unhelpful gesture. "Those places where time flexes a lot so it breaks easier."

"Oh, no," Jensen said. "Also, never call them that again, you weirdo." 

Jared stuck his tongue out at him. Because he was a child. "I'm going to call them that every time. So if it's not a time-" Jensen glared at him "-... thingy, then is there a problem? Another ripple or whatever? Because I'm not sure we should be doing things that might get you shot again." 

"First of all, you're not the boss of me, fuck off. And no, nothing like that." 

"Maintenance, then."

"No."

That earned him a puzzled frown. "Then... why are we here?" 

Jensen suddenly found his sandals profoundly fascinating. "We have a day off so I thought it might be nice to take a trip." 

Jared put his hands to his cheeks. "Why Mr. Time Traveler! Are you taking me on a date?" 

Jensen was not going to blush over a 22 year old Engineering undergrad. He wasn't. "I just thought we could use a break," he said, and hated himself for sounding defensive about it. "Don't come if you don't want to."

"I'm sorry, Jensen," Jared said, with a fond, gentle sort of smile. "I didn't mean it like that. I'd be delighted to go to Woodstock with you. Thank you."

Mollified, Jensen relaxed the stiff set of his shoulders. "Well, okay, then. Let's get moving then, so we get a good spot."

"Oh, and by the way," Jared said, as Jensen shut the door behind them. His cheeks were faintly pink but his eyes were steady as he said, "I'd be even more delighted if this was a date. Just in case you were wondering."

Jensen started blushing. "Good to know," he managed.

They spent the day in Woodstock, listening to the music and sharing stories and food with the other attendees. Jared looked at him like he was the whole damn world and, when Jensen finally mustered up the courage to lean in, Jared met him halfway, soft and careful and perfect. And then Jared laughed, an unutterably _happy_ noise, and Jensen realized that he was happy too, tucked against Jared's side in a ridiculous tie dyed shirt and listening to the bands croon about love and peace and a better future.

Dating Jared was the best idea he'd ever had.

Kissing under the stars quickly segued into holding hands, and frantic make outs on the couch, and casual cuddles, and dizzying, pleasure-soaked nights in Jensen's bed. For Jensen, who was hardly a monk but had never actually dated anyone before, it was all wonderfully, terrifyingly new. Jared, amazingly, seemed to have even less of a clue than he did, so they fumbled through a cavalcade of firsts together. Their productivity on the job took a staggering hit for the first few weeks because they couldn't keep their hands off each other. 

Jensen had to thank his lucky stars that Kaz was a) patient with him acting like a giddy child all the time and b) organized enough to keep the management from firing him.

One night, while Jensen was still trying to catch his breath after a mind-blowing orgasm, Jared glanced up from where he was tracing absent shapes on Jensen's chest.

"Tell me about him." 

Jensen raised an eyebrow at him. "What are we talking about now?"

"Your first love," Jared said, as if it was obvious. Maybe it was, on planet Jared. He grinned. "I want to know who my competition is."

Jensen snorted. "That was literally an entire lifetime ago. He's probably dead by now. I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"Says the guy with the time machine."

"Why are you asking?" Jensen asked. "Seriously, Jared."

Jared shrugged liquidly. "Just curious. I want to know more about you. You don't have to tell me though, if you don't want to."

"No, it's fine, it-" Jensen sighed. "It was a long time ago. I don't really remember the details, if I'm honest."

"You must remember something," Jared protested. "He was your first love."

"I don't-"

Jared laughed. "Jensen, come on! Gimme something!"

"He had this ridiculous haircut," Jensen surrendered, with a sigh. "Short little curls that were too short to actually curl, so they mostly just stuck out everywhere. He looked like a chia pet." 

"Sounds like a catch," Jared remarked dryly. 

Jensen smacked his arm. "I was a closeted 15 year-old, living in Texas, jackass. No judging me for my questionable taste." 

"Is that your type then? Guys with bad hair?"

"It worked out for you, didn't it?" Jensen teased, just for the pleasure of watching Jared go pink. "But no. It wasn't so much what he looked like-"

"Clearly," Jared muttered, and Jensen glared at him.

"Do you want to hear this or not? You're the asshole who asked in the first place."

Kaz chimed a chiding agreement.

Jared raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, I'm sorry. I'll be good."

Jensen sincerely doubted that, but pressed onwards regardless. "He was... kind. And patient. And he never seemed to judge me for being different from the other kids, which I can tell you was definitely _not_ the norm. He just made everyone feel welcome and wanted." Jared was listening, a fascinated expression on his face, and Jensen pushed away his nostalgia in favour of the much better reality sitting in front of him now. "Besides, he was the youngest teacher in the school by, like, 10 years. I'm pretty sure half the girls in the school were in love with him, too."

"Huh. Did you ever tell him?"

Jensen had to laugh at that. "Are you serious? Of course not! Texas, remember? Also, I'm pretty sure students sleeping with teachers only happens in porn."

"Yeah maybe," Jared agreed. He leered at Jensen. "Shame. I bet you were a really cute twink."

"Twink, yes. Cute, not so much. I was a profoundly awkward kid." Kaz chimed out to confirm that, and Jensen made a face. "Gee, thanks for that, Kaz."

"Shall I tell you about my first love?" Jared asked brightly, and Jensen rolled his eyes.

"Was that the whole purpose of this conversation?" he demanded, and refused to grin at the impish delight on Jared's face. "No, thanks."

Jared's glee collapsed into a pout. "Aw, why not?"

Jensen shrugged, not as casually as he would have liked. "Rather just have you to myself, if I'm honest."

Jared's expression softened. "Not worried about any competition?" he asked, leaning in.

"Not really," Jensen breathed, and felt Jared's smile against his lips.

"It's you," he heard Jared whisper into his skin much later, when they'd worn themselves out a second time and he was right on the edge of sleep. "My first and my only."

Jensen fell asleep smiling.

The two month mark of Jared's arrival passed with no mention of him leaving, and Jensen wasn't entirely sure what to think. They'd moved past the honeymoon phase, as Kaz kept calling it, and what came after was almost better. There was still lots of sex, but they spent more time just talking and enjoying being in each other's company. If Jensen hadn't been sure he was in love before, there was no doubt in his mind now, and Jared seemed to be in just as deep as he was.

Did that mean that Jared wanted to stay with him? For how much longer? What would happen when Jared decided to go back to his real life? Did he even want to?

Kaz told him to talk to Jared. Kaz was probably right.

Jensen didn't talk to Jared. He didn't dare.

Instead, he focused on enjoying this time as much as possible without thinking of what would come after.

Now, he was clearly the last person on Earth who'd have any practical knowledge of what being in an actual relationship was like, but he watched a lot of movies and he wasn't nearly as stupid as he was pretty. He knew that going on dates was an important part of dating, and he also knew that it was important to do things that Jared wanted to do. So, the next time he had a break, he decided to let Jared choose their destination.

"Day off today!" he announced to Jared over breakfast. "Where are we going?"

Jared's eyebrow raised. "How am I supposed to know?"

"Because we have down time and I've decided to let you choose where we spend it." 

Jared looked both pleased and surprised. Mission accomplished. "Really? Cool."

Dating, Jensen had discovered, was a lot like being undercover: if he faked ease with the situation, people tended to assume he knew what the hell he was talking about. "If you could go anywhere in history, where would you go?"

"Anywhere in history?" Jared repeated.

Kaz chimed out a clarification.

"Anywhere in American history," Jensen amended. "Kaz can go anywhere, but our jurisdiction is America. I'd need to get special permission to go anywhere else, which isn't as easy as it sounds."

"Gotcha." Jared chewed on his lower lip, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"You don't have to decide right now," Jensen ventured, after several moments of silence. Maybe this wasn't how surprises were supposed to work. "We can always..."

"The Golden Gate Bridge," Jared said, sudden and decisive. "I want to see the Golden Gate Bridge."

And really, Jensen would have thought that anybody going to San Francisco on a date world be in it for the nightlife, not the bridges, but the whole point of this exercise was to let Jared pick, so he didn't question it.

"When did you want to see it?" he asked Jared. "It's been around for a long time. You're going to have to be more specific."

"Oh, right," Jared said, rubbing at his neck with a sheepish sort of laugh. "I forgot. Sorry."

Jensen waved that off. "It's fine. Options, Kaz?" he asked, and Kaz immediately started rattling off some of the highlights in the history of the Golden Gate Bridge. "Okay, so it depends on what you're interested in. You want to go to the official dedication? The day or opened to foot traffic? The day it comes down?"

"Not that one," Jared said vehemently. "Can we... see it being built?"

Jensen permitted himself a roll of the eyes. "Of course we can. We can see anything, right Kaz?"

Kaz chimed an enthusiastic agreement, and that's how they ended up standing on the edge of the Golden Gate Strait on a brisk afternoon in February 1936, watching the construction crew work on the laborious process of hanging the roadway deck of the soon-to-be completed Golden Gate Bridge. 

Jared was rapt, his eyes bright as he watched. Personally, Jensen couldn't quite see the appeal, but it was a nice enough day once he got used to the chill, and Jared was holding his hand, so he wasn't going to complain.

When, exactly, had he become so easy to please? 

They stood in silence as the work crew finished for the day and left, a hush falling over the strait as the sun started dipping towards the horizon. 

"My family came here when I was a kid," Jared said suddenly, still staring out across the water at the half-constructed bridge. A nostalgic smile flicked across his face. "God, I was fascinated by this bridge. I begged my parents to drive over it over and over again."

Jensen imagined a tiny Jared with just as much hair, smooshing his face up against the car window to stare at the bridge, and smiled.

"It's what made me want to become an engineer, actually."

"So you're going to build bridges when you grow up?" Jensen asked, and failed kind of utterly at sounding unaffected by the idea.

Jared shrugged, a little awkwardly. "That's the hope. I mean, there's not as much call for suspension bridges these days, but you never know."

"If anyone could do it, you could," Jensen swore, and earned himself a soft, lovely smile.

"Thanks for this," Jared said. "It's really… it means a lot."

"Anything for you," was all Jensen could think of to say. "Whatever you want."

Jared tugged him in for a kiss; Jensen went willingly. 

"We should go," Jared said, when they drew apart. "You're cold."

Jensen could read the reluctance in Jared's gaze, so he smiled and leaned against Jared's side. "We can stay a little longer."

Jared's arm wrapped tightly around his shoulders, and he turned his attention back to the bridge in all its gleaming, orange glory. Jensen watched Jared, feeling safe and happy and so, so in love. 

As they stood there, the entire strait turned into molten bronze by the setting sun, Jensen thought that he could stay like this forever.

The next time they went to San Francisco, several linear months later, Jensen nearly died during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Somewhat less romantic.

"Run!" Jensen hollered, lungs pounding against his ribs. He could feel the heat of the fire licking at his heels, far too close.

"I am running!" Jared shouted back, long legs flying over debris and fallen masonry.

"Then run faster!" 

Behind them, the fire storm roared, devouring the city with rapacious inexorability. No amount of research could have prepared him for how terrifying it was, how fast and inescapably it spread. 

"Firemen ahead!" Jared yelled. "I think they're - shit!"

Jared skidded to an abrupt halt; Jensen crashed into him hard enough to rebound and land on his ass.

"The hell!" he demanded, in what would have been a scream if his lungs hadn't been burning. "Have you forgotten about the goddamn fire!"

Jared was already chivvying him to his feet, hands leaving smears of soot on Jensen's shirt. "This way!" he ordered, shoving Jensen towards a side street. "They're going to blow up that house!"

"They're-" Jensen half-twisted, trying to see, but Jared's grip was too tight.

"No time! We've got to get out of here!"

Not about to argue, Jensen fell in behind Jared as he started running again. The fire seemed to be everywhere, making it impossible to know which way to go as they wove around and through the ruined homes.

The ground trembled underfoot, and Jensen bit back a cry of alarm when Jared stumbled and fell, crashing down onto one knee. 

Jared shoved himself upright with a curse. "Another quake?"

"Dynamite, I think," Jensen corrected, frowning as he watched Jared wince when he tried to put weight on his right leg. "Okay?"

"Peachy," Jared gritted. He took a deep breath and tossed Jensen a shaky grin. "Let's go."

"If you can't-" Jensen started.

"I haven't got a choice. Now move! I'm not carrying you."

"Jackass," Jensen sniffed, trying to pretend he wasn't watching Jared like a hawk. "What kind of boyfriend are you?"

"One who'd like to live until tomorrow, thanks. Now, come on!"

With no choice but to obey, Jensen started running again. He kept one eye on Jared and one on the sky, trying to find a space somewhere, anywhere, where there was a gap in the flames.

Behind him, he could almost hear the shouts of the firemen as they worked to create a firebreak to stem the flow of the flames, but the roar of the fire drowned out anything more than the vague sound of voices. 

"Left!" Jared shouted, and Jensen veered after him without thought. His entire world dwindled down to the pounding of his heart and the struggle to run over the chunks of plaster, stone and wood littering the ground. 

Suddenly, the world opened up, and Jensen could have sobbed at the sight of clear, fire-free space ahead. A cable car route. The fire still loomed behind them, but they had a fighting chance now. He could see people on the other side of the tracks, not running, not fleeing the fires. They'd made it somewhere safer. Thank God.

Jensen became suddenly painfully aware of the fact that his lungs were burning and his legs were trembling so hard he wasn't sure how he was still standing.

"Wait," he panted at Jared, drawing to a stop. "I just need a-" _second_ , he didn't get a chance to say, because the ground he was standing on chose that moment to give way, sending him tumbling through the air with a strangled cry.

"Jensen!"

Something grabbed his hand, and he hissed out a pained breath as he jerked to an abrupt halt, dangling bodily off the side of what had once been part of a building. He looked up, and his heart nearly stopped at the sight of Jared, red-faced and anguished, above him. He had both hands wrapped around Jensen's arm, holding on with all of his strength.

"I've got you!" he cried.

Jensen could feel his eyes prickling. "Jared, I-"

A tumult of voices filled the air and suddenly there were a collection of other hands on Jensen's arm, pulling him up until he was back on solid ground, splayed out next to Jared and wheezing with fear and fatigue.

"Don't-" Jared panted. "-Do that again." 

All Jensen could do was nod.

It was two long days before they finally finished the job and said goodbye to the smoking wreck of San Francisco. 

They staggered back to Kaz, safely parked on the hillside outside San Francisco and disguised as a broken-down car so no one would try and steal him.

"Hi Kaz," Jensen said tiredly as they climbed in, just barely hearing Jared echo the greeting. 

It was strange. They were both dust-streaked and bloody. Jensen's arm was one solid, throbbing ache from shoulder to wrist, and he was pretty sure that Jared's ankle was going to need casting if he walked on it for much longer. Jensen was tired and hungry and sore and, somehow, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been so completely content.

Jared sank down into the new chair Jensen had found for him, slumping down like his strings had been cut. "Your job is insane," he said.

Jensen huffed out a tired laugh. "What? You can't handle one little earthquake? I'm disappointed."

Jared shot him a look that would have been arch if it hadn't been so wrung out. "First of all, I hardly think that counted as a little earthquake. And second, who saved whose ass back there, huh?"

"I just like giving you the opportunity to feel useful," Jensen said breezily. 

"Jensen, I _really_ don't need you nearly getting yourself killed to give me something to do."

There was an edge to his voice that made Jensen raise an eyebrow and take a closer look at the rigid set to Jared's shoulders and the crease between his eyebrows. "I didn't mean to worry you," he admitted, more gently than he'd really meant to. 

"I wasn't worried," Jared said immediately, and Jensen was reminded all over again of just how _young_ Jared was. God, he hated feeling like a cradle robber. Least of all because he really kind of was. "I just don't want to be the one to explain it to your boss that you bought it on my watch."

Jared was turning pink, his eyes shifting restlessly to look at everything except Jensen's face. Jensen decided to take pity on him. "Give me a little more credit than that, Jared. I've been doing this job just fine on my own, and I'll continue to do it once you decide you've had enough of spring break and you're ready to return to your real life. I earn hazard pay for a reason, you know."

He'd expected Jared to make a joke about that, maybe about who really deserved to be paid for dangerous hazards, and was surprised when he received only silence in reply. He chanced a look over at Jared and found him staring thoughtfully into space, an uncharacteristically inscrutable expression on his face. 

He frowned. "Jared? Everything okay?"

"I was thinking," Jared started, tentative.

"Well there's a dangerous hobby." Jared gave him the finger for that, which made Jensen smile. God, he was so doomed. "What were you thinking about?" he asked, turning towards the console to give himself something to do with his hands.

"About you."

Jensen bit back a reflexive smile. "Really? Care to be more specific?"

Jared took a deep breath. "I was thinking that that I might... stay. With you. If you wanted."

Jensen's dignity was grateful for the fact he wasn't facing Jared; it meant that he couldn't see the broad, sappy smile that broke out across Jensen's face without his permission. 

Jared was still talking. "It's just that you clearly need a keeper, and I don’t think I can let you go off on your own in good conscience, and I want, I mean, I'm not... I'd like to stay with you. Permanently. Because, I- I really like you, Jensen. Can you… say something?"

Jensen knew they needed to talk about this. Unlike Jensen, who'd had literally nothing to lose from becoming a Chrono Tech, Jared had a life and a future and a family waiting for him in his own time, and Jensen doubted very much that Jared had really thought about what it would mean to give all that up. 

But right now, there was only one thing that Jensen had to say.

"Y-" he started, but Kaz suddenly lurched beneath them and his words were lost in a startled curse when he slammed into the wall. The floor rattled underfoot like another earthquake, violent enough to make his teeth rattle inside his head. 

"What's...?" Jared asked, looking more than a little like a giraffe on rollerblades as he struggled to his feet, fighting for balance.

"I don't know! Kaz?"

Kaz answered with a flurry of sounds so multi-layered and cacophonous that Jensen could hardly even begin to understand.

"Kaz, calm down, I can't -"

"What's going on?" Jared asked, starting to sound a little panicked. "What's he saying?"

Jensen shook his head, fighting not to panic himself. "I can't, he's saying too many things at once. Something about danger and the time stream, but I don't-"

Kaz's next message was infinitely clearer in comparison, even if Jensen couldn't understand why it was limned in panic and anger thick enough to choke on. He swore. "Hold onto something," he ordered, giving up on staying upright in favour of hitting the deck and wrapping his arms around the closest solid object. "We're going to jump."

"Now?" Jared demanded, the word turning into a decidedly high-pitched shriek when Kaz suited actions to words and the world blurred out of focus. It was by far the bumpiest ride through the time stream that Jensen had ever taken; it felt like his teeth were going to rattle right out of his mouth, like time itself was fighting them every step of the way.

What the hell was going on?

When they finally stopped, it was with a suddenness that left Jensen gasping for breath, feeling like all the air had been sucked out of the room. They both lay panting in the abrupt silence, not even the familiar hum of Kaz's engines in the background.

"Kaz?" Jensen asked. For a long moment, there was no response, and Jensen was halfway to his feet before he got a tired chime in response. Jensen let out an explosive breath. "You can't worry me like that, buddy." He patted the console fondly, and felt more than heard Kaz's gentle response. A groan came from behind him, and he looked over to find Jared half under his chair and half splayed against the wall. "You alright there, hotshot?"

"I'm going to hurl," Jared answered weakly. "The hell was all that about?"

"For once, I'm as lost as you are. Kaz?"

Except Kaz must not have been as recovered as Jensen had thought, because he answered with the same confused babble of sounds as before. 

"Well?" Jared asked, apparently having decided that he was not, in fact, going to throw up. He rolled cautiously to his feet, still favouring the right, and wandered closer.

Jensen shook his head. "Whatever it is, it's too complex a thought for me to wrap my head around." He chewed his lower lip, puzzling through Kaz's message. "It's about something that hasn't happened yet, but somehow has, at the same time."

"And it's dangerous to the time stream?" Jared asked. "You said that before."

"I-" Jensen shrugged. "I think so? I don't usually have this much trouble understanding him."

Jared's brow furrowed as he thought. "Well, maybe we can figure it out another way? Where, er, when are we?"

Jensen spun around, lunging for the coordinate readout. "I'm not that great with coordinate identification, but we can cross references the-"

"Jensen?" Jared asked, when Jensen drew up short, staring in shock at the numbers on the screen. Numbers he recognized. "What is it?"

A dread that Jensen wasn't sure how to quantify rose up inside of him. "We're at Chrono Tech HQ."

There was a beat of silence. "Your company's office? Why?"

Jensen swallowed. "I don't know." 

A loud knock made them both jump, and Jensen whipped around to stare at the door. 

It opened before either of them managed to move a muscle. The figures who stepped through were recognizably human, but only just. They wore a uniform with the same insignia as Jensen's coveralls.

Jared made a stifled sound of shock. "The hell's are those?" he hissed.

Jensen was still staring at the figures, panic settling like lead in his gut. "The distant future of the human race. Two of the HQ's security staff to be more specific. Um, hi?"

"Jensen Ackles, Chrono Tech ID# 0301," one of the guards answered. "You have been summoned to a meeting with the management."

Jensen's felt his eyebrows climb up his forehead. In the entire time he'd been working with Jeff, he'd met the management exactly twice. Once for his swearing in and once when a job had gone so wrong that they'd needed three Chrono Tech teams to put time back in order again.

He didn't like this. Any of it.

"Of course," he said, fighting hard not to let his unease show. He was a professional, goddammit. "Lead the way. Come on, Jared."

Jared didn't even manage a single step. Between one heartbeat and the next, one guard was between Jared and the door.

"You must remain here," the guard told him, in a tone that brooked no opposition. 

Jared, unsurprisingly, ignored the tone entirely. "What? Why not?"

"You are not a registered Chronotic Technician, therefore you have no authority to participate in company matters." 

It was logical, and true, so why was Jensen feeling so nervous?

Jared cast him a pleading look. "Jensen! You're not going to leave me here, are you?"

What did he expect Jensen to do?

"Sorry, Jared," he said, mustering up a poor facsimile of a reassuring smile. "Work stuff. Guess you're going to have to wait."

"But-!" Jared protested, and Jensen crossed the floor to rest his hands on Jared's shoulders.

"Behave," he said in an undertone. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"You'd better," Jared whispered back, and it took everything in Jensen not to pull him in for a desperate kiss. 

"Have Kaz sort your leg out while I'm gone," Jensen suggested. "A shower might not be a bad idea, either."

"That's rich, coming from you," Jared muttered, but he didn't protest again.

One of the guards stayed behind with Jared, while the other escorted Jensen out of Kaz and into the blinding light of the supervisory building.

Jensen couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so afraid.

Jensen felt very scruffy indeed as he walked through the gleaming white halls, caked with soot and sweat and God only knew what else. No one paid him any mind as he and his escort passed, which predictably only served to make him feel more nervous. 

Finally, they reached the management's office, and Jensen's escort left him there. Jensen took a deep breath and knocked.

The first time Jensen met the management, he'd been utterly terrified. For all of Jeff's promises that things would be fine, the majority of Jensen's experience with authority figures up until that point had been poor at best. He'd more than half expected to be thrown to the curb as soon as they got a good look at his skinny gay ass.

Instead, the speaker for the management had smiled and said that he could call her Sam. 

These days, he was rather more Zen about his worth to the company, but that did nothing to calm his racing heart as the door slid soundlessly open and a voice bade him enter.

He found two of the management inside; one was Sam, to his relief, and the other was Jim, whom he knew only by sight. 

Sam smiled at him. "Jensen," she said, the music dancing in her voice reminding him, as ever, of Kaz. "It's been a while."

"Y-yes," Jensen agreed, wincing when he stuttered.

"I need you to be very honest with me right now, Jensen," Sam said. "Do you know why you're here?"

"No," Jensen admitted. "Should I? I mean, I haven't done anything. Have I?" 

"You were about to," Sam said, looking as stern as Jensen had ever seen her. "We've brought you here to stop you."

"W-what?" Jensen swallowed hard. "What do you mean? I'm not doing anything. I'm not planning on doing anything. This must be some kind of mi-"

"You were about to create a time rift of unparalleled proportions," Jim jumped in. 

"What?!" Jensen gaped at him. "How could I - no, I wasn't!"

"You were," Sam said, supremely confident. "You were about to agree to let that boy travel with you a partner, rather than a temporary companion."

This was about Jared? Jensen was dumbfounded.

"So what?" he demanded, more defensively than he'd intended. "You let Jeff pick me up off the side of the road." 

"You were not part of Jeff's timeline. There was no temporal conflict at risk in his taking you as his apprentice."

It took Jensen a moment to understand the implications of that. "But there's a temporal risk involved in me bringing Jared along? Seriously?" He shook his head in disbelief. "How is that even possible? It's not like our timelines overlap. Or do you just not like the idea of me having a boyfriend?" 

"Jensen." The way Sam said it, chidingly, like he was a child throwing a tantrum, irritated him. "Our goal is not to make you unhappy. But the fact remains that Jared Padalecki can no longer travel with you."

Something in the back of Jensen's mind pinged at the realization that he'd never actually got around to asking Jared his last name. That name seemed vaguely familiar, somehow, but he didn't really care to try and remember why right now. "Are you actually going to explain why not, or should I start guessing?"

Sam's expression was grave. "Because it would cause a temporal distortion widespread enough to destroy reality as we know it."

Jensen rolled his eyes. "He's just some college kid!"

"For now, perhaps," Sam said, unperturbed. "But in 2015, Jared Padalecki will become your tenth grade English teacher, thereby precipitating your meeting with Jeff Morgan." 

Jensen's jaw dropped. 

"He's Mr. P?" he said, sounding panicked even to his own ears. "Jared? He can't be!"

"He is," Sam confirmed. "If you fail to meet Jeff because Jared stays with you instead of going back to his own time…" 

"It's an unsustainable paradox," Jim said bluntly, and Jensen's hands started to shake. "And, given the wide ranging and prolific work you have done as a Chronotic Technician, the ramifications are farther reaching than any time rift that we've ever encountered."

"You have been integral in the repair and maintenance of countless moments in history. If Jared fails to follow his original path, every single event you worked on will become a ripple, and this organization is not equipped to contain a disaster on that scale." 

"I don't believe this," Jensen said. He felt like he might pass out. "Are you sure it's him?"

He remembered the way he'd felt and the nervous flutter of his heart with intimate detail, the specifics of what his beloved English teacher had looked like, the sound of his voice, what it was he'd actually done to capture Jensen's attention so completely, were little more than wisps of memory.

Was Mr. P really a future version of Jared?

"Jared can no longer travel with you," Sam repeated. "But even more than that, you must cut ties in such a way that won't compromise Jared's original timeline."

"He's going to be an engineer," was all Jensen could think to say. "Not a teacher. Are you _sure_ -"

"We are," Sam said firmly. "You have to convince him to return home so he can fulfill his role in the time stream."

"I… I see."

"You understand what you have to do?"

Ice settled in the pit of Jensen's stomach. "Please don't make me."

"It is preferable that the directive comes from you," she answered, her fancy wording nearly sending Jensen into a paroxysm of hysterical, panicked laughter. "Otherwise, it is likely that he will do something foolish in an attempt to regain contact in the future."

Jensen laughed, a bitter, angry sound. "So you're saying I need to break up with him."

"We're saying that his feelings and yours are of lesser importance than the survival of the universe," Jim said matter-of-factly. "And that we know you'll do what needs to be done."

"But I can't," Jensen said blankly. "I can't, that's not- It's _Jared_. And I, I think I might lo-" He couldn't say it. His tongue felt thick, unwieldy.

"It's your first romance," Samantha said gently. "The feelings will ease with time."

"Good thing I've got plenty of that," Jensen said bitterly.

"Time heals all wounds," she told him.

"Really?" Jensen asked, horrified by the way he felt like a helpless child just for asking.

No censure showed on Samantha's face. "I promise."

"He's going to hate me," Jensen said, in a small voice.

"Maybe," Sam admitted, infinitely gentle. "But at least he'll be alive to do so. History must play out in its own way, Jensen."

Jensen had never hated his job more.

Jared, of course, was all over him when he returned. 

"What's going on? Is everything okay? Jensen, are you alright?"

"Everything's fine," Jensen said, pushing past him to get to the console. He had to fight the urge to duck his head and avoid Jared's curious eyes. 

He felt more than saw Jared's frown. "What did they want to talk to you about?"

"New job," Jensen told him. "Big one." 

"Must be a big deal if they called you in to talk to you personally," Jared said, relaxing from the big ball of worry he'd been when Jensen had walked in. "Where are we going?"

Fuck, Jensen didn't know how to do this. "Ah," he ventured. "About that."

Jared blinked at him. "About what?"

Jensen steeled himself. "I won't be bringing you with me. I'm taking you home."

He watched as it took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in. Jared's expression was first puzzled, then hurt.

"Wh- what are you talking about?"

Jensen channeled the part of himself that had always wanted to be an actor when he grew up, and offered Jared a chagrined sort of not-smile. "Look, I didn't mean for your trip to end so abruptly, but it's- this is a really big job. I can't really afford any distractions." 

Jared got it immediately. "I'm a distraction?!" he demanded. "Since fucking when?" 

"Since always!" Jensen shot back, which shut Jared up in a hurry. "Jesus, Jared, why do you think I brought you along in the first place?"

"That's-" Jared paused, blinked away a thought. "What are you trying to say?"

"Look," Jensen said. "I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but this… relationship was never supposed to be long term. I told you that when you started traveling with me. And yeah, we lasted longer than my original estimate, but this is the end."

"Are you serious right now?" There was hurt beginning to shine through the anger on Jared's face, and his next words were tinged with a vicious sort of desperation. "They're responsible for this, aren't they? They, they told you to do this!" 

Jensen offered him a mildly chiding look. An 'are you seriously suggesting this' kind of look. "Why on Earth would they do that?"

"I don't know! But it's obvious that they're behind this." 

"Jared, the management doesn't care who I'm screwing, just so long as I get the job done." He willed himself to sound honest when he added, "They've never had a problem with any of my other... companions."

As he'd known they would, his words struck hard. He could see the evidence of the wounds they'd left reflected on Jared's hurt face. He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood to keep his own expression from mirroring that pain.

"I didn't realize you were that fucking lonely that you'd lie to me all this time just to have someone to pass the time with," Jared spat, and Jensen couldn't entirely hide his flinch.

He forced himself to relax with conscious effort. "There's a lot you don't know about m-"

"Bullshit! I _know_ you, Jensen, just like you know me! I don't know why you're doing this, but stop it!" Jared's whole face crumpled, and Jensen's heart _ached_. "Just, just stop it!"

"No."

Jared's shoulders slumped. "Don't you even care that I love you?" he asked, his voice thick with unshed tears.

"I never meant to hurt you," Jensen said helplessly. 

"Stop _lying_." 

"You can't stay," Jensen said, because it was the only truth he could offer.

Jared drew the back of his hand across his eyes and took a deep breath. "Then take me home."

"Jared-"

"I don't stay where I'm not wanted." Jared's eyes peeked through his fingers, spearing Jensen with a look. "Am I unwanted?"

Jensen said nothing.

The sound Jared made was nothing like a laugh. "Of course." One of his fists slammed against the wall, loud enough to make Jensen jump. "Fuck."

"Kaz," Jensen said, into the strangling silence. "Coordinates."

Kaz said nothing at all as the date on which they'd stolen Jared from time appeared on the screen. Jensen looked away from Jared's hunched, shuddering form on the couch and sat himself in the pilot's chair. 

The transition was as smooth as ever, so easy that Jensen almost resented it. It shouldn't be this easy to give Jared up.

"Miami Beach, March 10, 2004, around ten o'clock," Jensen announced dully. He didn't look up from the console. He couldn't.

"Great," Jared said, flat and angry, and fuck, Jensen didn't know how to do this. When he said nothing, Jared came to his feet in a flurry of stiff limbs. "Guess I'll be going then."

"I need your TAC back," Jensen said quietly. 

Jared yanked it off his wrist and tossed it to the ground. "I'm keeping your goddamn coveralls."

Jensen wasn't about to fight him on that one. "I'm sorry things ended this way," he offered. 

Jared made an inarticulate sound of rage and stalked towards the door. He paused there, and took a deep shuddering breath. His head tilted over his shoulder, and Jensen steeled himself against the bruised hope shining nakedly on his face. "Jensen, please."

Jensen was not going to break down. He _wasn't_. 

"Goodbye, Jared," he said, as calm as anything. "Thank you for traveling with me."

The hope on Jared's face shriveled and died, leaving him looking hollow and defeated in its wake. He shook his head and stepped down without a word, the door swinging quietly shut behind him.

And then Jared was gone, and it was just like Jeff, but a million times worse. 

Jensen managed to stay standing long enough to watch Jared's sad, slumped figure vanish down the road. Then he crumpled, hands coming up to cover his face as he howled in anguish. Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping off his fingers onto the floor as his body heaved and shuddered with the force of his cries.

Kaz chimed out a worried inquiry.

"No, Kaz," Jensen choked out. "No, I don't think I am."

Jensen went back to his life. What else could he do? He didn't dare go anywhere near the twenty-first century, both to avoid Jared seeing him and out of the fear that he'd never be strong enough to leave again.

Some naïve part of him had hoped that it wouldn't be so bad to return to his pre Jared life. What was half a year, in the grand scheme of things? Nothing. Definitely not enough time to supplant the half century that had come before.

If only it was that easy.

Everything reminded him of Jared. He started avoided things that reminded him: research, folk music, the entire twentieth century. He couldn't sleep, the bed too large and empty to cope with. He was quicker to panic, slower to react. He scarcely said more than ten words to Kaz in a day. He was a mess.

He'd known Jared for five and a half months of linear time, and he was never going to be the same again.

But he was still coping enough to work, so it didn't matter to anyone that he was falling apart at the seams. Well, except Kaz, whose sad voice hovered constantly in the air, but he didn't exactly count. And the job gave Jensen a reason to get up every day, which was a necessary thing for the first few months. 

Things were fine enough, right up until Jensen came within inches of getting himself killed during the California gold rush. He wound up with a failed assignment and a scar at his temple, but the real blow came afterwards. 

"What do you mean, I'm on probation?" he demanded. 

"Sorry, pet," Felicia said, her eyes unusually wide as she looked at the wreck that was Jensen. "Orders from management. Think of it like stress leave. Give yourself some time to rest and recover."

"I don't need rest!"

"Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with you there, sugar. You look, well, pretty awful."

Jensen ignored that. "I can still work! What about my monthly quotas? What about that revisionist, Misha? You can't take me off the reaction team!"

Felicia looked uncomfortable, Jensen noticed dimly. "Your workload is being redistributed to the other teams. Including the trace on the revisionist. Someone else will take care of it. So you focus on taking care of yourself, okay?"

"That's-" Jensen said, but Felicia was already gone. Jensen just barely resisted the urge to punch the monitor with his bare hand.

Which left him with far too much time to think and nothing to fill it.

He went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans six times in a row, trying his damndest to lose himself in the heat and the sex and the alcohol. The combination of intoxication and exhaustion made it possible to sleep, but it only made his waking hours even more of a trial. 

He went back to his miserable, soul-sucking apartment and stared at the walls.

Eventually, when he'd exhausted every other option he could think of, he went to see Jeff, because God knew he had nobody else who gave enough of a shit about him to want to listen to him whine about his lost love. 

Retirement suited him. Jeff greeted him with a smile and an offer of a beer, and listened patiently while Jensen haltingly told him the whole sordid story.

"I think," Jeff said, after Jensen was done. "That you should go talk to someone." 

Jensen was confused. "But, I'm talking to you." 

There was something painfully sad about the quirk of Jeff's mouth. Jensen didn't think it was a face he'd seen Jeff make before. 

"I mean a counselor. Someone who can help you figure yourself out." 

"There's nothing wrong with me," Jensen said, stung. "I don't need anyone's help." 

"You're trying to get yourself killed, Jensen!" 

"I'm not!" Jensen shot back reflexively, and refused to acknowledge the little kernel of truth he could feel in Jeff's words.

Jeff heaved a sigh. "Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing, letting you run away from the past." 

Jensen flinched, and was unable to keep the pain out of his voice when he said, "You saying that you should have left me to die in that truck stop?" 

Of course not, Jeff said, a touch irritably. "Did you become a fool when I retired? Because you damn sure weren't this stupid before. I'm saying that you've never really dealt with what your family did to you and it's given you some serious baggage." He gestured to the strung-out, gaunt entirety of Jensen. "Add heartbreak to the mix and it's no wonder that you're self-destructing. I'm worried, Jensen. About you. And about what all this pain is doing to you."

The brief flash of anger vanished, leaving Jensen feeling gray and tired. "I don't want to talk to anyone," he mumbled.

Jeff's expression was softer than Jensen had ever seen it. "That's why I think you should. I've got a doctor that I can recommend you. Just think about it, okay?"

Because this was Jeff, because he was fighting back tears again, because he was so goddamn tired of everything, Jensen nodded. "Okay."

Jensen stayed the night at Jeff's, and then the next. Jeff didn't mention the doctor again, but a neatly printed business card appeared on the table next to the guest bed the first morning, and Jensen kept it.

He left on the third day, because he couldn't keep dragging Jeff down, and he missed Kaz, besides. The card stayed in his pocket for a week before Jensen finally got up the nerve to call, Kaz's support chiming in his ear. 

Slowly, he improved.

He started sleeping more often, and he gained back some of the weight that he'd lost. He started feeling like himself again.

The day that management let him go back to work was the happiest day Jensen could remember in a while, and he didn't even care that all of his jobs were beyond simple. It gave him a sense of purpose to be doing even that much, proof that he wasn't broken forever.

He still missed Jared like a lost limb, but Jensen knew it was possible to live without a limb. He just had to adjust.

Sam had told him that time healed all wounds. Jensen figured that she was probably right, but she could have mentioned the scars that got left behind.

On his 297th day After Jared, Kaz told Jensen that they had a retrieval mission.

"A what?" Jensen asked, confused. "What's that?"

Kaz's answer was unusually vague, something about picking up a lost piece of Chrono Tech property. Which didn't sound like any job that Jensen had done before, but he supposed that was what he got for losing his mind for several months. 

"Geez," he sighed. "They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel with these jobs, hey Kaz? When did we become intertemporal mailmen? Is that what's happened to our lives?"

Kaz sighed and reminded him that he'd never earn his way back to doing regular jobs if he didn't get ones like these done. Jensen rolled his eyes and did as he was told.

Kaz spit them out of the time stream in July 2018 in some small California town that Jensen didn't bother learning the name of. Then he gave Jensen directions to a house that apparently contained whatever it was he was supposed to be retrieving.

"How am I supposed to find something when I don't know what it is? Am I supposed to knock on the door and ask for it?"

Kaz said that it couldn't hurt to try. Because he was a total pain in Jensen's ass.

"You know what? Just for that, I fucking will." He leveled a finger at the console. "And I'm going to blame you when management wants to know how we screwed this one up."

Kaz laughed at him. Jensen would have protested, but after so many months of Kaz not laughing at all, he'd take what he could get.

The house Kaz directed him to was small but well-maintained. Jensen squinted at it. It certainly didn't look like the kind of place that would have future tech in it. 

While Jensen was debating the various merits of actually knocking versus breaking in and turning the place upside down, the door opened on its own.

There was a man at the door, mid-30s, taller than Jensen and broad shouldered, with dark hair that hung loose around his face and eyes that didn't seem able to decide what colour they ought to be. The man blinked at Jensen with a surprise that was mostly recognition, and his mouth curved into a smile that Jensen would have recognized anywhere. 

"Still 32, huh?" Jared Padalecki asked mildly. 

Jensen felt the world tilt as his memories rearranged themselves. Those still blurry images of Mr. P sharpened just slightly, enough for a key difference to assert itself.

"You kept your hair long," he blurted. 

Shockingly, a smile quirked Jared's face. "Yeah, well, someone told me I look like an idiot with short hair."

Jensen had both daydreamed and nightmared about seeing Jared again. And this was nothing like anything he'd pictured, but he knew what he had to do.

"I'm sorry!" he exclaimed, forcefully enough to make Jared's eyebrows fly up. "God, Jared, I'm so, so sorry. I never wanted you to leave, but I- I didn't have a choice. If I hadn't..." 

Jared waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, I figured that out the second 14-year old you walked into my classroom." He winked. "You really weren't kidding about how twinky you were as a teenager." 

"I'm aware," Jensen managed, still trying to wrap his head around what was happening. 

"You broke my heart, you know," Jared said, with a casual air that spoke to a long-healed hurt. "Sending me away like that." 

Jensen wondered if it would make things better or worse if he confessed that his own heart still hadn't recovered. No matter how he counted, he hadn't had the benefit of decades to help him get over it. Not like this Jared, tall and strong and comfortable in his own skin. 

The thickness in his throat strangled the words before he could even try to voice them.

"I was a total wreck," Jared confessed, shaking his head. "And it was even worse because I couldn't tell anyone about you. At best, they'd have thought I was insane, talking about a gorgeous time travelling mechanic and his musical time machine. So no one knew what was wrong with me."

Jensen's stomach dropped. "Jared, I-"

"I nearly dropped out of school," Jared continued, because Jensen apparently wasn't feeling shitty enough yet. "My parents practically had to stage an intervention. I lost pretty much the whole year and ended up having to change my major."   
   
"And you chose teaching? What about..."  _building bridges_  he couldn't bring himself to say, not when he saw the look on Jared's face. His words died along with his courage.

Not that his cowardice stopped Jared from answering his unfinished question. Jared, he reflected, had always been the brave one. 

"After... well, it was hard, wasn't it?" Jared leaned up against the door jamb, hands in his pockets. "Every time I considered returning to school, all I could think of was the two of us watching the sun set over the damn Golden Gate Bridge, and I couldn't do it. I'd wanted to build bridges since I was a little kid, but it was impossible when all engineering did was remind me of you." He shrugged, a little awkward in the face of Jensen's open-mouthed horror. "So I switched over to literature studies. And then went to school for teaching. My mom's a teacher too, so it seemed like a good choice, y'know? I liked it well enough. And I like to think that I was a pretty okay teacher."

"More than," Jensen managed. Faintly, he wondered what had turned Jared off engineering the first time, the time without Jensen ruining his life. There had to have been something otherwise Jared wouldn't ever have been his teacher. He hoped it hadn't been quite so traumatic, the first time, for all that it didn't really make much of a difference now. 

"Then one day you came into my classroom, and I realized why you sent me away." Jared grinned ruefully. "Granted, it would have been nice to know that sooner, but I get it. That was why the management needed to talk to you, right? Because you were going to let me stay and it would have messed up the time stream?"

Mutely, Jensen nodded. 

Some undefinable change came over Jared at that, easing a tension that Jensen hadn't even realized he was carrying. "That's what I figured. Fuck." 

Jensen didn't know what to say. "Are you… mad at me still?"

"No," Jared said, immediate and sincere. "I'm not gonna lie, I was mad for a long time. But I know why you had to do it, and I've had plenty of time to come to terms with it."

"Oh," Jensen said.

Familiar eyes looked at Jensen from a stranger's face. "You look tired. How long's it been for you?"

"Not long enough," Jensen admitted, in a voice like broken glass. "And too long."

Jared was still looking at him. Jensen turned his face away.

"I loved having you as a student," Jared said suddenly. "You tried so hard. And you weren't particularly subtle about your crush, if I'm honest."

Jensen made a face at that, but Jared wasn't done. 

"And then came the day when you didn't come to school." Jared's voice went soft and sad. "It was all I could do to keep myself from punching your parents in the face. You broke my heart all over again. I quit the next day." Jared's smile was tinged with bitterness. "I figured that the time stream was done with me at that point, so I moved up here. And I've been waiting, I guess."

"Waiting for what?"

The look that Jared gave him was full of so much naked fondness that Jensen didn't know what to do with it.

"I… what do you want, Jared?"

Jared took a deep breath. "I'm wondering if you're still in need of a partner." 

There was no air in Jensen's lungs.

"Speechless?" Jared asked, raising an eyebrow. "Times _have_ changed."

"Jared, no," Jensen managed, forcing the words out through sheer force of will. "You don't want that. You've got family, friends! People who care about you and would suffer if you up and vanished. There's a reason why most Chrono Techs are either orphans or fuckups." 

Jared hummed thoughtfully. "I wasn't planning on vanishing, exactly. I'm pretty isolated living out here, you know. Most of my interactions with people happen via email and Facebook, these days." There was something weighty in his eyes as he added, "I'm pretty sure that Kaz can hook me up with a computer with a temporal Internet connection if I ask nicely enough."

"But I lied to you! I broke your heart! You said so yourself! How-" Jensen's throat was tight. "How could you want me back?"

"Because I love you." Jared said it so easily, like he didn't know how it made Jensen's heart hammer in his chest. "And I told myself that I wouldn't waste my chance when I met you again. So here I am, taking a chance."

Jensen swallowed hard. "How- how did you know you'd meet me again? I thought I'd lost you forever."

"Didn't I tell you? I'm a little bit time sensitive these days," Jared said, throwing the words out like a casual observation. "Side effect from being an unofficial Chrono Tech, as far as I can figure. Not a lot, but I've been keeping a hand in Chrono Tech affairs, just a little. I had a feeling the management would be sending someone to talk to me eventually. I, ah," the faintest dusting of pink highlighted Jared's cheeks. "I'm glad it was you."

"You're what I was sent here to get," Jensen realized in a rush.

Jared cocked his head. "What?"

"I'm on a retrieval mission. Kaz sent me to your house to get something that belonged to the company." He remembered Kaz's unusually cagey answers to his questions and nearly groaned aloud. "That sneak totally knew."

Jared chuckled. "Sounds like I have the seal of approval from Kaz, at least." He pulled his hands out of his pockets, arms opening in unmistakable offer. "I'd really like to know your thoughts on the matter, though."

Jensen found himself with his arms wrapped around Jared's neck without entirely knowing how he'd got there. Jared's arms enfolded him, bigger and stronger than Jensen remembered, but exactly the same besides that. 

"Are you sure?" he couldn't help but ask, mumbling the words into Jared's chest. "You'd be giving up everything for me, and, yeah okay, maybe you can email your family or whatever, but you'll stop being able to visit them when they notice that you're not aging, and I don't want you to regret it, but you-"

"Jensen," Jared said, with a calm authority that had him snapping his mouth shut automatically. "I have had 13 years to think about what I want. And, despite everything, it's still you." For the first time, a hint of vulnerability crept in Jared's eyes. "If you want me, of course."

"Yes," Jensen said immediately. "I, yes. Always. I've been- I… I missed you." That wasn't quite right. He took a deep breath and looked Jared square in the eyes. "I love you. I think I've loved you from the beginning. My first and only."

Jared sucked in a ragged breath, and then they were kissing, frantic and relieved. Jensen tightened his grip, wanting to get closer. He could feel tears smearing between them, and he couldn't have said who was responsible for them. He came back for a second kiss, and a third, shuddering in relief with every touch. 

They'd both calmed down some by the time they finally drew apart, still wrapped in the circle of each other's arms. Jensen didn't want to let go.

"So. Partners in time?" Jared offered, startling a wet laugh out of Jensen.

"Oh god, I'm going to be stuck with you and your shit jokes forever. But yeah," he agreed, feeling his heart lift like the sun coming out after the rain. "Partners in time."

Jared smiled. "Perfect."

~fin

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes and Acknowledgements: Oof, this one was a challenge. Between work, an unexpected trip to the hospital last week and me being, well, me, I'm vaguely surprised this one got finished at all. I'm sad that I didn't get to write about more of their time travel adventures, but I'm reasonably pleased with how it turned out. 
> 
> So many thanks to ameraleigh for picking my story and creating some truly beautiful pieces to go with it. Thanks also for your patience with me, hon! Go check out her amazing [MASTER POST](https://ameraleigh.livejournal.com/23973.html) and show her all the love!
> 
> Thanks to Laura for the speedy beta. Any remaining mistakes are mine. Kudos and fistbumps to the crew on the Discord server who helped me sprint to finish the first draft in time for the deadline.
> 
> And thanks always to for being a rockstar. 
> 
> Finally, thank you to everyone who reads this story. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
>  
> 
> **Please do not post my works on Goodreads or any other third party website.**


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